[caption id="attachment_34789" align="alignright" width="400"] The training team from left to right: Jonas, Milos, Cliodhna, Benji, Sharmila, Joona, Milla, Brian, Johan, Matti - © Evertime Visuals[/caption] The Nordic Debate Academy was the first in a series of trainings co-ordinated by the Athens EUDC and Thailand WUDC. This training was hosted by the Danish Debate Association in conjunction with FINDA - Finnish Debating Association, Stockholm Debate Society, and Lund Debate Society / Lunds Debattsällskap at the Copenhagen Business School. The NDA featured two and a half days of workshops and a four round tournament with a break to finals. 10 countries were represented at the ...

In the Summer 2018 issue of International Debate, Miriam Kohn (LearningLeaders, Rochester '17) and Chris Perkins (Rochester '17) published an article titled "Fair Play: Proposals for Reform to the Break System in British Parliamentary Debate." In said article, they discussed the possibility to replace team breaks on speaks with a point-based break and additional bye-based elimination round. AchteMinute (AM): First off, so lucky to be chatting with you, Miriam & Chris. Can you tell us briefly about your background in debate? Miriam Kohn (M): Thanks for taking the time to chat with us! My high school didn’t have a debate team, so ...

[caption id="attachment_34639" align="alignright" width="400"] The top two speakers and champions of this year's HWS IV: Aditya Dhar and Tejal Patwardhan - © Eric Barnes[/caption] The HWS IV 2018 was won by Harvard DP (Tejal Patwardhan, Aditya Dhar) from Opening Government. They debated the final on the motion "This House believes that the state should curb assortative mating" against Yale CP (Ko Lyn Cheang, Lorenzo Pinasco) in Opening Opposition, Brandeis/Northeastern SS (Ravi Simon, Dennis Su) in Closing Government, and Rochester FO (Ben Frazer, Warish Orko) in Closing Opposition. The final was chaired by Buzz Klinger with Alexander Beaumont, Allie McGowan, Dan Yoon, Daniel Berman, Shani Bennett, and Steph White.  The Novice Final of the tournament was ...

[caption id="attachment_34633" align="alignright" width="338"] © Saharalipour[/caption] The Hart House Inter-Varsity 2018 was won by Laurier/Unaffiliated SX (Ivy Xu and Brendt Schmidt) from Opening Opposition. They debated the final on the motion "This House opposes the propagation of Canadian exceptionalism" against Harvard CH (John Hunt, Sophia Caldera) in Opening Government, Yale AC (William Arnesen, Ko Lyn Cheang) in Closing Government, and Cornell KW (Jin Mo Koo, Emma Rose Wirshing) in Closing Opposition. The final was chaired by Mo Niaz with Alexandra Sundarsingh, James Hardy, Julia Milden, and Meghan Auckland. The Novice Final of the tournament was won by  Western DX (Vidit Desal, Emily Xie) in Closing Government, on the motion "With the goal of improving representation in media, this House would ...

The Yale IV 2018 was won by Harvard CH (John Hunt and Sophia Caldera) from Opening Government. They debated the final on the motion "This House would legalize and train sex workers specifically to work with disabled people" against Brown GG (Jack Gramlich, Sandy Greenberg) in Closing Opposition, Harvard BrMe (Ed Bracey, Dasha Metropolitansky) in Closing Government, and Princeton AO (Samuel Arnesen, Sinan Ozbay) in Opening Opposition. The final was chaired by Michael Mao with Bobbi Leet, Charlie Barton, Daniel Berman, Lorenzo Pinasco. The Novice Final of the tournament was won by  Princeton JW (Daniel Ju, Greg Weaving) in Opening Government, on the motion "This House believes that the horrors of history are incompatible with a belief in ...

[caption id="attachment_34546" align="alignright" width="230"] Leiden TBA, the Winners of the Tournament - ©David Metz[/caption] The Roosevelt Open 2018 in Middleburg was won by Leiden TBA (David Metz and Joas Bakker) from Closing Opposition. They debated the final on the motion "Given the choice, THBT US Supreme  Court Justices should be elected by a vote amongst federal judges rather than a popular vote" against DSDC Orange (Lukas Joosten and Elian Lavrijsen) in Opening Government, Pure Esoteric Wisdom (Tanya Shrivastava and Fabian Beitsma; Delft) in Opening Opposition and Leiden, Mike is your Problem now (Roel Schoenmackers and Lotte Classen; Cicero) in Closing Government. The final was chaired by Lisa Schallenberg with Daan Spackler, Jeroen Wijnen, Milos Marjanovic and Simone Landman. The Novice Final ...

Today's feature presents: The first speaker to be top of the tab at an EUDC in both categories as an ESL participant since 2001, Lucía Arce Cubas! In the interview Lucía told us about her origins, debating career and being ESL in the UK. ...

Olzhas Abdukhamitov and Aigerim Shadeyeva are the conveners of the Astana EUDC, Olzhas volunteered at Novi Sad and Aigerim competed, making it to the ESL Quaters. Raffy Marshall and Monica Forman are the CAs of Astana EUDC. We sat down with them to talk about bringing the EUDC to Central Asia. ...

Following days of massive discussion on social media, the EUDC Council held an extraordinary meeting regarding events at the EUDC in Novi Sad, where a team from Qatar University refused to debate Israeli teams. In order to clarify what happened, we summed up the recent developments for you. ...

The Novi Sad EUDC, lasting 30.07.-05.08.18, came to an impressive conclusion: Teams from Tel Aviv won both the ESL (English as a Second Language) and the Open final! The ESL dominance continued with - originally Mexican - debater Lucía Arce, starting for Sheffield, being both top speaker in ESL and in total. Read more about the constellations, teams, speakers, judges and motions below. ...

As the 2018 European Universities Debate Championship progresses, the break is now online. ...

Kanat Nogoibayev and Chyngyz Ibraimov represent Kyrgyzstan for the first time in the history of EUDC. We spoke to them about their hopes for future EUDCs in Central Asia and what debating in a post-Soviet states is like. ...

Dhalia Alayassa, Tamara Abdel Lafit and Iman Sarj are students at the Alquds University and the An-Najah University. They are the first university students from Palestine to compete at the EUDC. Additionally, Weenta Mehari coaches Alquds University and Mariel Golden is the coach of An-Najah University. We interviewed them about Palestine joining the EUDC. ...

On Monday afternoon, the EUDC 2018 precouncil took place at Novi Sad University. Apart from the usual updates from the OrgComm, the equity and language teams and the chief-adjudicators, the following notable aspects were discussed. Partial Octo Finals Due to the comparatively low number of teams (188) that registered on Monday, the CA-team strongly recommended to cut partial octo finals to keep the break competitively at 10% as suggested by the constitution. Precouncil rejected this recommendation unanimously, arguing that the no-show teams usually are not top teams, but teams that were not to break anyway. Language Committee Suggestion on Language Bias Feedback The language ...

In Warsaw, 2016, Scotland was, after a tough race against Hull and Riga, selected as the host of EUDC 2018. Jan-Gunther Gosselke, president of the EUDC Council’s Executive Committee, describes how a chain of events led to this year’s Euros taking place in Novi Sad, Serbia instead. Last summer in Tallinn, the Scottish bid was to be ratified. This is when Scottish OrgComm first brought an issue regarding accommodation to council’s attention: The hotel no longer was available at the initial week planned for EUDC because one of their long term customers asked for accommodation at the same time and they ...

Portrait of a Tudor as a young Al (Tudor Musat and Alasdair Donovan, Cambridge) have won the 2018 edition of the KCL Open. Organized by conveners Emily Frizell and Joel Richardson, the tournament took place from June 30th to July 2nd at the King's College in London and was chief-adjudicated by Srishti Krishnamoorthy-Cavell, Tejaswini Krishnaprasad and Cian Luddy. In a grand final judged by Tim Squirrel (chair), Clara Rupf, George Goddard, James Laird-Smith and Penny Sadeghi, Portrait of a Tudor as a young Al (OO) faced Remember, big speaks gaps are homophobic (Joe Roussos and Imogen Harper-Lawrence, OG, Oxford), I guess technically ...

[caption id="attachment_34093" align="alignleft" width="150"] View of Lake Jasna, Kranjska Gora - © Duncan Crowe[/caption] With over 225 participants, including students, teachers and trainers the World Schools Debate Academy 2018, the biggest version of the WSDA so far, came to a successful end after taking place from the 23rd to 30th of June. The WSDA is a debate academy that teaches school students between the ages of 13 to 18 everything about debating in the World Schools Debating format in Kranjska Gora, Slovenia. The students participate in a very intense week of debate training, followed by a three day tournament. The educational part of ...

The weekend of May 26th and 27th featured this year's Vienna IV, chief-adjudicated by Alex Moise and Monica Forman and, as every year, complemented by a Schnitzel night and a post-final karaoke. In the final, judged by Elaye Karstadt (chair), Monica Forman, Alex Moise, Huyen Nguyen and Katrin Fallmann, BGU A (OO, Ayal Hayut-Man and Noa Ovadia) prevailed over The von Shap Family (OG, Yonathan Shapira and Michael Shapira), Belgrade DCA (CG, Ilija Ivanišević and Miloš Marjanović) and Jenseits von Vergleich und Analyse (CO, Philipp Müller and Calyxx Peucker) on the motion "This House believes that consent isn't the solitary ...

On May 11th and 12th, the annual Paris Open, featuring its traditional wine tasting during rounds, took place. Chief-adjudicated by Yair Har-Oz, Shrishty Krishnamoorthy and Harish Natarajan, the tournament was won by the team Michael and Desmond (Michael Dunn-Goekjan and Desmond Fairall, OO) against If you can't beat them, join them (Floris Holstege and Tom Manor, OG), Break ou Grève (Martin Devenney and Nissrine Majdi, CG), and Wild Chicken University Z (Jacob Lan and Joseph Xiao Liang, CO on the motion ‘This House believes that Wakanda should transition into a democracy.’ (with infoslide). The panel judging this final consisted of ...

[caption id="attachment_33925" align="alignright" width="400"] Left to right: Dan Lahav (CA), Idan Bressler (Winner), Amichay Even Chen (Winner), Ido Kotler (Best Speaker), Duncan Crowe (CA) - © Annie Schwartz[/caption] After a weekend in Greece the Athens Open 2018 got won by ‘Tel Aviv A’ (Amichay Even Chen and Idan Bressler). They spoke in the final from Opening Government defeating ‘Novi Sad kenobi’ (Jovan Petronijević and Milos Marjanovic) in Opening Opposition, ‘Tel Aviv - You’ve been struck by a smooth POI’ (Annie Schwartz and Gil Peled) in Closing Government, and ‘Random nomen graecum’ (Roy Schulman and Elaye Karstadt) in Closing Opposition on the motion ‘This house believes that the general approach of states ...

[caption id="attachment_33868" align="alignleft" width="400"] Winners of the Nottingham Trent Open (Alex Yeadon, left, Ciara Berry, right) - © Ciara Berry[/caption] Congratulations to the winners of the Nottingham Trent Open, ‘Nottingham A’ (Ciara Berry and Alex Yeadon). They won the final from Opening Government defeating ‘Iron-Men Unite!’ (Craig McDonald, formerly Cardiff, and Dan Wood, Birmingham) in Opening Opposition, ‘Nottingham B’ (Emily Dormer and Dimosthenis Kaldis) in Closing Government, and ‘NTU Nice For What?’ (Neal Tank and David Farmer) in Closing Opposition on the motion ‘Supposing feasibility, This House supports the establishment of a Queer Republic.’ The final was judged by Elliot Porter in ...

Congratulations to the winners of the MDX Open, ‘When Everything Was Beautiful, and Nothing Hurt’ (Srishti Krishnamoorthy-Cavell, Cambridge, and Eitan Har-Oz, formerly The Hebrew University of Jerusalem). They won the final from Closing Government defeating ‘He thinks he's the pro’ (Francesca Reynolds, UCL, and Greg Weaving, unaffiliated) in Opening Government, ‘LSE Bramworth’ (Josh Ashworth and Daniel Bramble) in Opening Opposition, and ‘Basic White Girl and Token Male’ (Rachel O’Nunain and Louis Collier, Oxford) in Closing Opposition on the motion ‘This House believes that the pursuit of social mobility is doing more harm than good’. The final was judged by Nisha Telesford ...

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="281"] The Winner of the tournament, USA Red - © ZIP[/caption] The team USA Red (Ella Michaels, Nikhil Ramaswamy, Ranen Miao) has won the 16th International Debate Tournament Ljutomer, Slovenia from opposition on the motion "TH regrets privatisation of space research and travel" against Logos Bermuda (Vasja Grošelj, Iza Jerman, Taja Kovačič) from Slovenia in proposition. The final was judged by Anna England Kerr (England) in chair, together with John Tomlinson (England), Ela Jurko (Croatia), Luka Baković (Croatia) and Ann-Sophie Zeipekkis (Germany). The best speaker of the tournament was Nikhil Ramaswamy from USA Red with an impressive average of 73.67 speaker points. [caption id="attachment_33763" align="alignright" width="286"] The final of the tournament - © ZIP[/caption] The tournament was held from the 8th ...

As announced on our international facebook page we planned doing an interview with the newly elected hosts of the EUDC 2018 in Novi Sad. Everything has happened rather quickly since the former hosts from Edinburgh declared their problems with hosting the EUDC 2018 and we wanted to give the community the opportunity to ask the questions they had in mind. So we ended up having a conference call with Jovan Petronijević, the convener, and Miriana Muntean, the logistics officer and asking them a bunch of question you guys had sent in.  ...

[caption id="attachment_33743" align="alignright" width="400"] The winners of the Rotterdam Open 2018 - © Laurens van Doorn[/caption] The Rotterdam Open (24.-25.03.2018) ist over and the results are here: In the Open Final, the team Cheaper than Couple's therapy (Marike Breed, Amsterdam & Roel Becker, Leiden) took the win as Closing Government on the motion "THW implement a system of ‘lease of life’ for all products of manufacture (such as: shoes, phones and machines)." The motion had an infotext (see below). They debated against Spatha A (Emma Lucas & David Metz, Leiden) in Opening Government, Stormy Daaniels plus one loyal customer (Floris Holstege, ...

[caption id="attachment_33707" align="alignright" width="400"] David Metz (left) and Oskar Sherry (right) - © Aditto Bhattacharjee‎[/caption] Congratulations to the team Sebas, you can't mech out racism with 10 seconds left in your speech (Oskar Sherry (Oxford), David Metz (Leiden)) for winning last weekend's Tilbury House IV 2018. They won the final from Opening Opposition on the motion "THW legalise dueling to the death" against Give us new podcasts (Katharina Jansen, Stefan Kotz (Maastricht)) in Opening Government, Streitkultur Peitho (Konrad Gütschow, Lennart Lokstein (Tübingen)) in Closing Government and Streitkultur - Focus on Science (Marius Hobbhahn, Samuel Scheuer (Tübingen)) in Closing Opposition. The final was ...

Some people debate to improve their skills, some for the competition and some for an ideal of discourse or knowledge. For the latter, we'd like to present an opportunity to engage in conversations with people from all around the world to exchange and discuss differing views: Bridger. The newly developed app just got publicly available, so we thought it a good time to have in interview with the people behind it. ...

The team ‘Made in the Diff’ (Becky Wesson and Emma Meadows, Cardiff) won the Swansea Open.  They managed to win the final from Opening Opposition defeating ‘Swing B’ (Ieuan Skinner and Angus Rome, Swansea) in Opening Government, ‘Nid yw'n wir ein henw tîm’ (Catrin Richards, formerly Liverpool, and Craig McDonald, formerly Cardiff) in Closing Government and ‘First Opp Café’ (Aristed Kore, formerly Durham - due to illness, John Lewis was not able to take part in the final) in Closing Opposition on the motion ‘Assuming this Technology exists, This House would ban memory erasure technology’. [caption id="attachment_33554" align="alignright" width="320"] The winners ...

[caption id="attachment_33492" align="alignright" width="461"] Happy debaters after a fabulous training weekend in Paris (c) Olivia Sundberg Diez[/caption] Last weekend, on the 3rd and 4th of February 2018, the Debate Training Weekend in Paris took place. It was organised by the Scottish EUDC Training Team, namely Chief Adjudicator of the upcoming Scottish EUDC 2018 Olivia Sundberg Diez in cooperation with the United Debaters of Paris. Over the whole weekend 7 workshops and 3 training debates were enjoyed by 50 participants from Spain, the Netherlands, Belarus, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, the UK and from across France. Alex Harris, Daan Welling, Eleanor Angwin and Martin ...

During this year's WUDC in Mexico the council met once again, discussing a series of changes. Editor Jan-Gunther Gosselke was live at the meeting and summarised the most relevant results. ...