Lincoln-Douglas Debate

Constructing a LD Speech

Lincoln-Dougals Debate is a highly philosophical form of debate that attracts the sharpest and most thoughtful students. Students are required to construct difficult and complex argument based on resolves that schools from all over the country debate. Thus students will become familar with the arguments of philosophers as diverse as Mill, Kant, Plato, Singer and Rawls and be able to extrapolate what these thinkers might consider regarding world poverty, privacy rights, nuclear weapons or any number of issues.

Barrack Hebrew Academy students have achieved remarkable results in L-D Debate. We are competing against the very top students from the very top debate schools in the country in the tournaments we enter. In addition, our 'opposition' debate at tournaments every week whereas, due to kashrut and Shabbat needs, Barrack Hebrew Academy only competes in 4-5 tournaments per year at universities where Jewish student needs can be easily met. Barrack Hebrew Academy students have won national ranked tournaments and have gone unbeaten in preliminary rounds. Barrack Hebrew Academy always 'break' a number of students into the finals and that the combined winning record of our students is nearly always better than 50%.

At the tournaments students stay in the dormitaries of Jewish students and eat at the local Hillel House.

We try to compete in the following tournaments though sometimes Yale and Penn fall victim to coinciding with Yom Tavim.

Pennsylvania University

Yale University

Princeton University

Brown University

Harvard University

Hudson Valley Challenge (Vassar)

Some useful LD Debate links

www.victorybriefs.net (good materials to buy, results posted, discussions)

www.lddebate.org (good discussions of resolves and philosophy)

nfl (National Forensic League)