Cross Examination Debate Association

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Cross Examination Debate Association
TypeNonprofit organization, policy debate
Founded1971
HeadquartersUnited States
Key people
Scott Harris, President[1]
Websitecedadebate.org

The Cross Examination Debate Association (CEDA) (/ˈsiːdə/ SEE-də) is the largest intercollegiate policy debate association in the United States. Throughout the school year, CEDA sanctions over 60 tournaments throughout the nation, including an annual National Championship Tournament that brings together over 175 individual debate teams from across the nation to compete on the basis of research, persuasive speaking, argumentation, and philosophy.

For a number of years, CEDA employed a two-person team value debate format. CEDA utilized two topics each year, one governing the Fall Semester and the second governing the Spring Semester. For the Spring 1996 topic, it was voted[2] to continue debating the fall topic about Mexico. Beginning with the 1996–1997 season, however, CEDA has employed a single, year-long policy debate topic.

Controversy[]

In the 2013 tournament, the winning team from Emporia State University was criticized for using personal memoirs and rap music to criticize white privilege during the debate.[3][4] CEDA President Paul Mabrey points to the value of limited actual formal rules in CEDA debate and the ways that a variety of forms of debate raise the educational value of the activity and call these objections "nothing other than thinly-veiled racism."[5]

In 2014, despite winning the tournament, the winning team from Towson University was criticized by these observers for referencing racial slurs. In the wake of this controversy, CEDA President Paul Mabrey stated in an official CEDA video of that the accusations of poor preparation and incomprehensibility "...[R]epresent the worst of our human bigotry. These attacks on Towson, Oklahoma, and others in our debate community are motivated by racism and fear."[5]

National Tournament results[]

References[]

  1. ^ "Officers". Cedadebate.org.
  2. ^ http://www.cs.jhu.edu/~jonathan/debate/ceda-l/archive/CEDA-L-Dec-1995/msg00254.html
  3. ^ Carew Kraft, Jessica (April 16, 2014). "Hacking Traditional College Debate's White-Privilege Problem". The Atlantic.
  4. ^ Ferlanda Fox Nixon (March 28, 2013). "Collegiate Debaters Win Two National Championships".
  5. ^ Jump up to: a b CEDA Announcement Video. Cross Examination Debate Association. May 12, 2014.
  6. ^ "CEDA Nationals Long Beach: Results". www.tabroom.com. Archived from the original on 2019-04-11. Retrieved 2019-04-11.

External links[]

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