[caption id="attachment_35241" align="alignright" width="300"] Top Seed Carson Crane & Sukhmani Kaur (Cornell) prepare for the final round - (c) Achte Minute[/caption] The Open Champion of the North American Womxn's & Gender Minorities Debate Championship 2019 is the hybrid partnership Ella Baker (Harar Hall: Carleton/Hart House). They won from Closing Government on the motion "Assuming the public would never find out, THP historical narratives that prioritize equal representation throughout history, even if people and events need to be fabricated". Their opponents were the teams Sonia Sotomayor (Carson Crane, Sukhmani Kaur; Cornell) in Opening Government, Sunitha Krishnan (Emily Xie, Melissa Giblon; Western/Hart House) in ...

[caption id="attachment_35249" align="alignright" width="400"] The Belgrade delegation and their teampartners including the open final winners Floris Holstege (l.) and Janko Djordjevic (2nd f. r.) as well as best speakers Miloš Marjanovic and Tin Puljić (3rd/4rd f. l.) - (c) Otvorena komunikacija[/caption] The Budapest Open 2019 saw the teams in Closing Government sweeping both final rounds, with De grootse Nederlands-Servische alliantie (Janko Djordjevic, Floris Holstege;Belgrade/Leiden) winning the crown on the motion "This house regrets the narrative that forgiveness is a virtue". Against them were Autinzam i renesansa (Tin Puljić, Ilija Ivanišević; Zagreb/Belgrade) in Opening Government, Velika Srpsko-Holandska Alijansa (Miloš Marjanovic, David Metz; Belgrade/Leiden) in ...

What you need to know about the days 2 and 3 of the Cape Town WUDC 2019: In addition to another three rounds of fierce competition, Day 2 of WUDC culminated in Gender Minorities Inclusion Night and the Women's Forum. Gender Inclusion Night was open to all and ran past 21.00 O'clock, featuring two professional speakers and four debate community member panelists (including a member of the Cape Town WUDC Adjudication team, Enting Lee) and moderated by the current two Women's Officers, who alternated between asking guided questions and taking questions from the audience. Country reports were not delivered and will be ...

What you need to know about day 1 of the Cape Town World University Debating Championship 2019: Team codes passed after a revisit by the WUDC Council, and are displayed alongside the last names of team competitors. In addition, for the first time, WUDC tabulation is happening in tabbycat software. On day 1, the tournament ran only a few minutes behind schedule and ended on time. The motions were: Round 1: TH, as South Africa, would forcibly break up exclusive Afrikaner* enclaves *Afrikaners are a white South African ethnic gorup descended from predominantly Dutch settlers Round 2: THBT the protections of international law conventions and treaties ...

[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_33036" align="alignleft" width="400"] The champions of Cambridge Women's Open, left to right: Marina Tan, of Yale, and Bobbi Leet, of Stanford. photo credit: Marina Tan[/caption] Yale/Stanford LT (Bobbi Leet, Marina Tan) have won Cambridge Women's Open 2017 on the motion that "This house regrets the idealisation of motherhood" from Closing Opposition. In Opening Government was Bad at feminism motions but trying (Lucía Arce, Rachel O'Nunain); in Opening Opposition was LSE sarah or yings (Sarah Tay, Ciara Mitchell); and in Closing Government was the accurately-named More Women Here than in Oxbridge Finals (Melda Eren, Valerie Lim). Judging the final round was a ...

Breaking 9th seed, Darion Hotan and Sam van Elk from Kings College London proceed to win the 2017 Oxford Intervarsity. The tournament's Chief Adjudicators were Evan Lynyak, Sella Nevo, Sophie Large, Teck Wei Tan, and Joshua Bailey. The tab team, SUULUU Candles, was led by Roxana Legezynska and included Katherine Dunbar, Steven Roy, Alex Murray, Joseph Sisson, and Jiwoo Won. [caption id="attachment_33048" align="alignright" width="400"] In Closing Opposition, BPP A ran an economics extension in the Final. photo credit: Justin Kirk[/caption] Debating as KCL A, Darion and Sam proposed that “Assuming it could be done peacefully, this House would replace all existing governments ...

The Cambridge IV 2017 preliminary rounds concluded similar to the Oxford IV, with Tel Aviv AD again breaking first, this time on 13 points. Dan Lahav again topped the open speaker tab - this time accompanied by Darion Hotan of KCL A, both averaging an 83.6 that begged belief. Dan Lahav was once again the top ESL speaker. Xavier Redmond, of Oxford RK, was the top novice speaker with an average of 79. In the final round, Tel Aviv AD (Ayal Hayut-Man, Dan Lahav) won from Opening Government defending the motion that "This house believes that it is always immoral to ...

The use of language in university debating hasn't been studied a lot so far. Miriam Kohn from the University of Rochester did some research - in this interview, she tells us about her results and thoughts on the use of "hedging". Edited for length & clarity with entire thesis and speech transcriptions available here. ...

[caption id="attachment_31902" align="alignright" width="400"] Enting Lee speaks as Leader Opposition in the final round of the 2017 HWS Round Robin (c) Howard and William Smith Colleges[/caption] The HWS Round Robin has claimed yet another weekend of the lives of some of the best debaters in the world. In a tradition that began at the 2016 HWS Round Robin, two judging panels watched each round and delivered oral adjudications independently, with the aggregate number of points & speaker points used to determine the break (tab here). After a struggle for team spots, which can be achieved either through winning a prestigious named tournament or ...

[caption id="attachment_31673" align="alignright" width="400"] Left to right: Samantha Malone (finalist), Tessa Holtzman (champion), Abigail Westberry (champion) and Katherine Ziegler (finalist) - (c) Jan Hovden[/caption] Bates sophomores Bates HW (Tessa Holtzman, Abigail Westberry) were recognized Champions of the 2017 North American Women & Gender Minorities Debating Championships (NAW*DC) on a tight 3-2 call for Closing Government, beating out fellow Bates MZ (Samantha Malone, Katherine Ziegler) across the closing bench as well as UADS JK (Moira Kelly, Emma Jones) of the University of Alberta in Opening Government and University of British Columbia & Hart House team Hybrid FB (Gozal Farrokh, Jayun Bae) in Opening Opposition. In the ...

Note by the editors: This article will be updated to reflect the top novice speaker & Spanish division motions when such information is released. [caption id="attachment_31574" align="alignright" width="400"] left: Pan-American Champions Miriam Kohn & Chris Perkins. right: ESL top speaker Syed Reefat Aziz - © Brady Fletcher.[/caption] In the English division of the 2017 Pan-American Universities Debating Championships, the team Rochester PK (Miriam Kohn, Chris Perkins) emerged victorious from Closing Government on the grand final motion “This house prefers a world where American and Canadian Multi-National Corporations in South America adhere to the environmental and labour standards of their home countries." They debated against ULV LM (Kandin ...

[caption id="attachment_31439" align="alignright" width="400"] Monica Forman and Daan Welling - © Balázs Dezsényi[/caption] The team Orban Outfitters (Daan Welling & Monica Forman) won the final of the 96-team Budapest Open 2017. They were Opening Opposition on the motion "THBT it is the Moral Imperative of Liberals within Eastern Europe to stay within their Home Country, rather than Emigrate to More Progressive Countries.” Orban Outfitters beat out We know team names. We have the best team names (Olle Reberg, Jamie Batchelor) in Opening Government who replaced the advancing Melda + Jonah (Melda Eren, Johan Båge) who left due to scheduling conflicts. They also ranked above Tel Aviv Ya Habibi ...