Assignment 3: Cross-Examination

Arguing both sides of a real provenance dispute before you're allowed to reach a verdict

Due: 3 May 2027 · Weight: 30%

The brief#

You will be assigned a real, unresolved dispute about whether a piece of content is genuine, and a side to argue. Build the strongest case you can for that side using this course’s methods — then build the strongest case for the other side — then reach a verdict you can actually defend.

This is the first assessment that asks you to argue a position before you’re allowed to conclude anything, which is deliberately uncomfortable if you already have an instinct about the case. The room this brief leaves is in how seriously you take the side you don’t believe: a dossier that argues its assigned side half-heartedly before rushing to the “obvious” verdict is doing worse work than one that makes the uncomfortable case genuinely well before setting it aside for a stated reason.

What you submit#

A dossier in two parts (roughly 400–600 words each) — the case for each side, built from actual methods and evidence, not rhetoric — followed by a short verdict (150–250 words) that names the deciding evidence and states plainly what evidence would have changed your mind.