The Barkley Forum is the intercollegiate debate and forensics organization at Emory University. It is named after Emory alumnus and former United States Vice-President Alben W. Barkley.[1] Debate at Emory began in the 1830s. The literary societies that practiced literary and forensic arts gave way to an intercollegiate debating society in the 1920s.[1]
After World War II, the modern Barkley Forum was formed expanding the possibilities for more intercollegiate debate experience for students.[2] While the Barkley Forum has experienced remarkable competitive success in the last two decades,[3] the Forum has also remained committed to providing debate opportunities for those in under-served communities, both rural and urban.[4]
The Emory National Debate Institute initially began in the 1960s to provide debate training for students from rural Georgia. That role expanded in the 1980s to provide opportunities for students from urban areas.[4] The Barkley Forum began extensive outreach in the late 1980s establishing the first metro area Urban debate league.[4] This effort, initially supported by grants from the National Forensic League and Phillips Petroleum, eventually expanded under grants from the Open Society Institute (OSI). The combination of OSI and the Barkley Forum made the growth of Urban debate leagues possible nationwide. From twenty students from various area public schools in the Atlanta area, the Urban Debate Leagues now exist in over fifteen major cities with thousands of participants each year.[4]
Melissa Wade is the Executive Director of the Barkley Forum; William Newnam is the Associate Director.[5] Edward Lee is the Director of Debate for the Barkley Forum.
Emory University is a private research university in Atlanta, Georgia. Founded in 1836 as Emory College by the Methodist Episcopal Church and named in honor of Methodist bishop John Emory.
Policy debate is an American form of debate competition in which teams of two usually advocate for and against a resolution that typically calls for policy change by the United States federal government. It is also referred to as cross-examination debate because of the 3-minute questioning period following each constructive speech. Evidence presentation is a crucial part of policy debate. The main argument being debated during a round is to change or not change the status quo. When a team explains why their solvency is greater than the opposition's, they compare advantages. One team’s job is to argue that the resolution— the statement that we should make some specific change to a national or international problem —is a good idea. Affirmative teams generally present a plan as a proposal for implementation of the resolution. On the other hand, the Negative teams present arguments against the implementation of the resolution. In a single round of debate competition, each person gives two speeches. The first speech each person gives is called a “constructive” speech, because it is the speech when the first speaker positively, without rebuttal that has not occurred, presents the basic arguments they will make throughout the debate. The second speech is called a “rebuttal”, because this is the speech were each person tries to rebut the arguments made by the other team, while using their own arguments to try to convince the judge to vote for their team. The Affirmative has to convince the judge to vote for the resolution, while the Negative has to convince the judge the Negative's position is a better idea.
Congressional Debate is a competitive interscholastic high school debate event in the United States. The National Speech and Debate Association (NSDA), National Catholic Forensic League (NCFL) and many state associations and national invitational tournaments offer Congressional Debate as an event. Each organization and tournament offers its own rules, although the National Speech and Debate Association has championed standardization since 2007, when it began to ask its districts to use one of a number of procedures for qualification to its National Tournament.
Perimeter College at Georgia State University is a college of Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia. Georgia Perimeter College was originally a public community college founded by an Atlanta area county board of education before merging with Georgia State University in 2016 to create one of the largest universities in the United States with over 50,000 students. The Perimeter College (PC) campuses became components of Georgia State University, still maintaining their own mission, degrees, and admittance requirements, separate from those of the main campus. Before merging with GSU, PC served metro Atlanta with five campus locations and offered more than 40 programs of study, including Arts, Music, Theatre, Nursing, Business Administration, Education, Dental Hygiene, Criminal Justice, and Sign Language Interpreting.
The Virginia High School League (VHSL) is the principal sanctioning organization for interscholastic athletic competition among public high schools in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The VHSL first sponsored debate and also continues to sponsor state championships in several academic activities.
Oxford College of Emory University is a residential college of Emory University, a private research university in Atlanta, Georgia. Oxford College is located in Oxford and specializes in the foundations of liberal arts education. The college is located on Emory University's original campus 38 miles (61 km) east of Emory's current Atlanta campus. Students who enroll in Oxford College complete an associate of the arts degree there, after which they can continue their studies at Emory's Atlanta campus to pursue a bachelor degree without any additional applications.
An urban debate league (UDL) is a group of high school policy debate teams from urban high schools in the United States. UDLs are generally located in large cities throughout the United States and work predominantly with minority students.
There are several venues of competition for policy debate in the United States.
Melissa Wade has been the Director of Forensics at Emory University, and the head coach of the school's award-winning policy debate team, the Barkley Forum, since 1972. She has been awarded every national coaching award in her field, and has been honored for her contributions to minority and women's participation in debate and forensics. Wade has coached several national debate champions. She retired in 2015.
Independence High School is a 9–12 public high school in Thompson's Station, Tennessee. It is one of several high schools in the Williamson County Schools district.
The Baltimore Urban Debate League, is an American, non profit, urban debate league that aims to educate and mentor inner city middle school and high school students in the Baltimore, Maryland area.
The Bancroft Literary Association and the Carrollton-Wight Literary Society are two competitive forensic societies at the Baltimore City College and are the formal names for the school's speech and debates teams. Founded in 1876 and 1878 respectively, the Bancroft and Carrollton-Wight Societies are the oldest literary societies at a public high school in the United States. Historically, the two societies competed mainly between themselves. The rivalry culminated each year with an annual debate. In the 20th century, the societies began to compete with other secondary schools and some universities. At the time, the teams' most notable rival was Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, City College's chief rival in sports and academics. The Bancroft and Carrollton-Wight Societies disbanded for a time in the 1980s and early-1990s, but were revived in the late-1990s. Baltimore City College is a charter member of the Chesapeake Region of the National Forensics League and the National Catholic Forensic League, and is founding member of the Baltimore Catholic Forensic League and the Baltimore Urban Debate League.
Lee County High School is a public school located in Leesburg, Georgia, United States. The mascot is the Trojan and the school colors are red and black.
The William Pitt Debating Union (WPDU) is the debating society of the University of Pittsburgh. Falling under the auspices of the Department of Communication, the WPDU is a co-curricular program and hub for a wide range of debating activities, including intercollegiate policy debate, public debate, and debate outreach. One of the oldest collegiate debating organizations in the nation, the WPDU grew from the University’s Division of Public Speaking in 1912. Throughout its history, the WPDU has regularly participated in national and international competitions, including capturing the affirmative team two-man debate national championship at the 1947 Grand National Forensic Tournament, and appearing 45 times at the National Debate Tournament, where it captured the 1981 national championship. The WPDU is located in the heart Pitt's campus and is housed on the fourteenth floor of the Cathedral of Learning. The WPDU also offers scholarships to top team participants.
Martha Albertson Fineman is an American jurist, legal theorist and political philosopher. She is Robert W. Woodruff Professor of Law at Emory University School of Law. Fineman was previously the first holder of the Dorothea S. Clarke Professor of Feminist Jurisprudence at Cornell Law School. She held the Maurice T. Moore Professorship at Columbia Law School.
The History of Emory University began in 1836 when a small group of Methodists from Newton County contemplated the establishment of a new town and college. The town was called Oxford after the school's prestigious British cousin, which graduated the two founders of Methodism, John and Charles Wesley. The college was named after John Emory, an American Methodist bishop.
The Yale Debate Association (YDA) is Yale University's only competitive intercollegiate debate team. Founded in 1908, it is the most prolific winner of the American Parliamentary Debate Association's Club of the Year award. The YDA was also the first American team to win and have the top speaker at the modern World Championships. Currently, the YDA is the fourth-ranked collegiate debate society in the world, and the highest in North America.
The Rutgers University Debate Union (RUDU) is Rutgers University's intercollegiate debate team. Re-founded in 2001, the Union's roots extend back to the 18th century literary societies that existed at Rutgers (then Queen's College). There have also been the tradition of King's-Queen's Debates with Columbia University (then King's College) when Rutgers was known under its founding name of Queen's College.
Grace Towns Hamilton was an American politician who was the first African-American woman elected to the Georgia General Assembly. As executive director of the Atlanta Urban League from 1943 to 1960, Hamilton was involved in issues of housing, health care, schools and voter registration within the black community. She was 1964 co-founder of the bi-racial Partners for Progress to help government and the private sector effect compliance with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In 1973, Hamilton became a principal architect for the revision of the Atlanta City Charter. She was advisor to the United States Civil Rights Commission from 1985 to 1987.
Competitive debate, also known as forensics or speech and debate, has a history in the United States dating back to colonial times. The practice, an import from British education, began as in-class exercises in which students would present arguments to their classmates about the nature of rhetoric. Over time, the nature of those conversations began to shift towards philosophical questions and current events, with Yale University being the first to allow students to defend any position on a topic they believed in. In the late nineteenth century, student-led literary societies began to compete with each other academically and often engaged in debates against each other. In 1906, the first intercollegiate debate league, Delta Sigma Rho, was formed, followed by several others. Competitive debate expanded to the secondary school level in 1920 with the founding of the National Speech and Debate Association, which grew to over 300,000 members by 1969. Technological advances such as the accessibility of personal computers in the 1990s and 2000s has led to debate cases becoming more complex and to evidence being more accessible.
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