The Canadian University Society for Intercollegiate Debate is the national organization which governs all English language competitive university debating and public speaking in Canada. It sanctions several official annual tournaments and represents Canadian debating domestically and abroad. Its membership consists of student debating unions, sanctioned by their respective universities, from across Canada. CUSID has been described as "a student-run, parliamentary debate league with close ties to the American Parliamentary Debate Association".
Debate is a process that involves formal discourse, discussion, and oral addresses on a particular topic or collection of topics, often with a moderator and an audience. In a debate, arguments are put forward for opposing viewpoints. Historically, debates have occurred in public meetings, academic institutions, debate halls, coffeehouses, competitions, and legislative assemblies. Debates have also been conducted for educational and recreational purposes, usually associated with educational establishments and debating societies. These debates emphasize logical consistency, factual accuracy, and emotional appeal to an audience. Modern competitive debate also includes rules for participants to discuss and decide upon the framework of the debate.
The American Parliamentary Debate Association (APDA) is the oldest intercollegiate parliamentary debating association in the United States. APDA sponsors over 50 tournaments a year, all in a parliamentary format, as well as a national championship in late April. It also administers the North American Debating Championship with the Canadian University Society for Intercollegiate Debate (CUSID) every year in January. Although it is mainly funded by its member universities, APDA is an entirely student-run organization.
The Brown Debating Union (BDU) is a student-run debating organization at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. The team competes in American Parliamentary Debate and British Parliamentary Debate. Currently the team is ranked 2nd in North America.
The North American Debating Championship is one of the two official university debate championships of North America. It is sanctioned by the national university debating associations in the United States and Canada, the American Parliamentary Debate Association and the Canadian University Society for Intercollegiate Debate. It has been held each winter on an alternating basis between the United States and Canada since 1992. The host university arranges all judging and is not allowed in the competition. The most frequent hosts have been the University of Toronto and McGill University, which have each hosted the championship three times. Bates College, Cornell University, Johns Hopkins University, and Queen's University have each hosted twice. This tournament, often abbreviated as NorthAms, is not to be confused with the North American Universities Debating Championship, abbreviated as NAUDC, which is hosted separately in the fall of each year as a British Parliamentary Style tournament. The two events are coordinated such that each is hosted by a different country, the United States or Canada, in a given year.
The World Universities Debating Championship (WUDC) is the world's largest international debating tournament and one of the largest annual international student events. WUDC is held in the British Parliamentary format.
Parliamentary style debate, colloquially oftentimes just Parliamentary debate, is a formal framework for debate used in debating societies, academic debate events and competitive debate. It has its roots in parliamentary procedure and develops differently in different countries as a result.
There are several venues of competition for policy debate in the United States.
The Australasian Intervarsity Debating Championships (known colloquially as "Australs") is an annual debating tournament for teams from universities in the Australasian region. It is one of the world's largest debating tournaments, second only in size to the World Universities Debating Championship (WUDC), the European Universities Debating Championships (EUDC) and one of the largest annual student events in the world. Australs follows the Australia-Asian Debating format (three speakers plus replies), rather than the British Parliamentary Style used at WUDC. It is held every year in early-July under the auspices of the Australasian Intervarsity Debating Association (AIDA). The host university is selected a year before at a meeting of the Council of the Australasian Intervarsity Debating Association.
The Boston University Debate Society is a member of the American Parliamentary Debate Association. The current incarnation of the Boston University Debate Society was formed in 1999, and competes in parliamentary debate. Previously, Boston University teams competed in other varieties of collegiate debate. For instance, in 1975 a team from Boston University came in third at the National Debate Tournament, a policy debate competition..
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.
John V. Wertheim is an American lawyer and politician who served as Chairman of the Democratic Party of New Mexico from 2004 until 2007. During that time, he also served on the Executive Committee of the Democratic National Committee. In 1996, he was the Democratic nominee for the United States House of Representatives in New Mexico's 1st congressional district against the incumbent Representative Steve Schiff of the Republican Party. The treasurer for his congressional campaign was Arvind A. Raichur.
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 as of January 2024, the highest ranked 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.
The Debattierclub Stuttgart (DCS), also known as the Stuttgart Debating Union, is the debating society of the University of Stuttgart. It holds debates in both German and English. It was founded in 2004 and is now one of the internationally most successful German debating societies. The DCS is Vice World Champion and provided the Second Best Speaker of the World in English as a foreign language (EFL) at the World Universities Debating Championship (WUDC) 2010. At WUDC 2011, the DCS provided the Fourth Best Speaker of the World in English as a second language (ESL) as well as the Best Speaker of the World in EFL.
The Queen's Debating Union is the debating society of Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. It was founded as Canada's first debating society in 1843 and became one of the four founding organisations of Canadian University Society for Intercollegiate Debate. It continues to be an active club on campus and has a strong presence both domestically and internationally as a competitive parliamentary debating club.
The Asociación Mexicana de Debate (AMD) is the regulating body for debate in México, formed by students, former students and debate coaches with experience at the most important debating competitions in the world, such as the World Universities Debating Championship, the World Universities Debating Championship in Spanish and the World Schools Debating Championship, and it is the only body that organizes British Parliamentary, Karl Popper and World Schools debate competitions in the country, including two national championships. AMD has the objective of spreading debate all around the country.
The US Universities Debating Championship (USUDC) is the largest British Parliamentary debating tournament in the United States, and one of the largest debate tournaments in the world. The event is held for college and university students attending school in the United States, and is hosted by a different university each year. The host is selected by the member schools of the US Universities Debate Association. The event determines the National Champions for the year.
Competitive debate, also known as forensics or speech and debate, is an activity in which two or more people take positions on an issue and are judged on how well they defend those positions. The activity has been present in academic spaces in the United States since the colonial period. 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. Competitors and coaches have made efforts to reduce discrimination in the debate community by introducing new arguments and recruiting debaters from underprivileged communities.
The HWS Round Robin (HWS RR) is an invitational British Parliamentary (BP) debate tournament hosted annually by the Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, New York. Participation in the HWS RR is considered prestigious among BP debaters as it is limited to exactly 16 teams that qualify via either an automatic bid given to the champions of major debate tournaments that happen throughout the year, or a competitive application to the tournament's selections committee, with auto-bid teams given priority.
