Engineer denigrates me to generate debate (12)
I believe the answer is:
disagreement
'debate' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'engineer denigrates me' is the wordplay.
'engineer' indicates an anagram.
'denigrates'+'me'='denigratesme'
'denigratesme' with letters rearranged gives 'DISAGREEMENT'.
'to generate' is the link.
(Other definitions for disagreement that I've seen before include "Contretemps" , "Conflict" , "dispute" , "Quarrel" , "Lack of consensus" .)