Intuitions and Intervention

[W]e have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men. — George Orwell

Many debaters and judges believe that intuitions should carry little to no evidential weight in a debate round. In this post, I…

The Argument for Inclusion: Fostering Agonism in Debate By Rodrigo Paramo and Varad Agarwala

We recognize this article is long, but we believe that these are arguments that need to be publicly accessible (and publicly contested). We’ve included sub-headings in case…

Fairness vs. Critical Arguments by Shrey Desai

The Harms of Pre-emptive Argumentation by Dan Alessandro

I. Introduction

In recent years, there has been a strong trend towards strategies that center around “pre-emptive” arguments (also known as spikes) in the constructive speeches. Debaters run these…

Trent Gilbert Wins the 2014 Iowa Caucus

Cedar Rapids, IA — Congratulations to West Des Moines Valley’s Trent Gilbert for winning…

Debate History (Part I) by Adam Tomasi

Debate history is a subject that I have never seen discussed beyond occasional storytelling about successful debaters from long ago. My hope is that it becomes a more popular area of analysis; it’s something that I’ve wanted to analyze in that it unites two…

Varun Bhave Wins Voices

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Evidence Ethics in LD Debate: A Proposal by Akhil Gandra and Arjun Tambe

Evidence ethics has been an issue subject to controversy since the dawn of policy debate. However, while policy has fairly concrete norms regarding evidence ethics disputes, LD does not, resulting in…