Welcome to the ESU New York Debate League!

2023-2024 School Year

TOURNAMENT schedule

• Novice Debaters Workshop & Scrimmage Oct 14, 2023 at City & Country School
• November 4 at Nightingale-Bamford School
• December 2, 2023 at Dalton School
• January 20, 2024 at Tuckahoe School
• March 2, 2024 at Ethical Culture Fieldston School
• April 27, 2024 Championship Tournament at Speyer School

REMINDER: EACH SCHOOL MUST PROVIDE ONE JUDGE FOR EVERY TWO TEAMS.
Can you host a debate at your school during the 2023-24 season? Email us at debate@esuus.org.

2023-24 Season Topics

SATURDAY, APRIL 27 Championship Tournament

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 2nd TOURNAMENT

• Humans should colonize Mars.
• This house would pursue contentment over achievement when the two conflict.
• Cities should ban rideshare apps such as Uber and Lyft (Varsity Only)

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 4th  TOURNAMENT

• Abolish admissions preferences for college athletes
• Taylor Swift should make a significant number of concerts on each tour free
• Humans should colonize Mars (Varsity Only)

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 14th Novice Debaters Workshop & Scrimmage

2022-23 Season Topics

April 29th Championship Tournament

• Ban Hate Speech
• Streaming services are bad for music
• Parents should be able to control the curricular content of their children’s schools.
• Genetically-modified plants are more beneficial than harmful to the environment
• Give the Black Hills back to the Sioux Nation

March 4th Tournament:

• This house prefers a world in which AI is smarter than humans
• Ban Hate Speech
• Earth should be governed by a single-world government. (Varsity only)

January 21st Tournament:

Parents should be able to control the curricular content of their children’s schools.

Streaming services are bad for music.

Varsity Only
The United States should implement a flat tax (varsity only)

December 3rd Tournament:

Novice and Varsity

• Eliminate high school football
• This house celebrates the rise of telehealth
• Varsity Only
  Amazon does more harm than good.

November 5th Tournament:

Novice and Varsity

• Captive live animal displays (such as zoos and aquariums) do more harm than good.
• Television is a bad influence.
• Varsity Only
  This house believes that America should have a four-day work week.

Topics from the April 30th, 2022 Championship Tournament Were:

• Children under 14 should not use smartphones.
• The United States should implement compulsory voting in general elections.
• Sanctions do more harm than good
• Abolish the Olympic Games
• Schools should have cameras in classrooms.

Some of the Topics Debated during the 2021-2022 Season Were:

• Ban plea bargains.
• Schools should not give grade
• This house supports the death penalty (Varsity Only)
• This house supports genetic engineering of human embryos
• This house prefers a world in which national secession is widely permitted.
• Ban Plea Bargains (Varsity Only)

2021 New York Debate League Championship
We are so proud of all our schools and students for participating in this year’s program! Congratulations to the ESU NYDL Middle School Debate team from The Dalton School in New York City for winning the 2021 Middle School Debate Championship, and to all of this year’s participants. Read more about this year’s season.

TOPICS FROM THE MAY 2021 CHAMPIONSHIP

New Topics

• The US should not develop or use lethal autonomous weapons.
• Dysfunctional democracy is better than benevolent dictatorship.
• Overall, private schools do more good than harm.
• Pandemic lockdowns have done more good than harm.

Returning Topics

• US citizens should be required to complete two years of national service
• The two-party system is bad for American democracy
• There should be no required subjects in high school
• Museums and galleries should display works of art anonymously
• The US should implement a UBI
• Abolish the senate
• Countries responsible for the greatest share of greenhouse gas emissions should pay reparations to the countries most threatened by climate change

PARTICIPATING SCHOOLS:

• City and Country School
• Dwight School
• East New York Middle School of Excellence
• Ethical Culture Fieldston
• Grace School
• Hackley School
• Harvey School
• Hoboken Charter School
• Nightingale-Bamford School
• Speyer Legacy School
• The Dalton School
• The School at Columbia University
• Tuckahoe Middle School
• United Nations International School
• West End Secondary School

Alice Uhl, Director of International Scholarship, Shakespeare & Debate 

auhl@esuus.org

(212) 818-1200, ext. 212

LOCAL CONTACT

Nick Smart
President
New York Debate League
 nicks@cityandcountry.org

“Debating in the ESU NYDL was one of the highlights of my students’ year. The ESU NY Debate League has been exceptionally welcoming and kind to us, and we are so appreciative of the high quality tournaments we were part of this year . . . they chose great topics, and created an environment where even in the most difficult situation imaginable, the kids were able to have high quality, spirited debates.”

– Mark Schiller Debate Coach for Blessed Sacrament School in Washington DC

Debate Team from the Hackley School wins 2016 English-Speaking Union Middle School Debate Championship Tournament

NATIONAL NEWS – posted May 1, 2016

The Hackley School, Stephen Fitzpatrick, Kiri Fitzpatrick, Hannah Ostfield, Alex Goldman

The English-Speaking Union Middle School Debate Program capped off a successful fifth year with its annual Championship Tournament, which took place at Stone Bridge Middle School in Allentown, NJ, on April 16, 2016. All six ESU Middle School Debate Program leagues participated bringing together 250 debaters from 29 schools from New York, New Jersey, Virginia, Maryland, and Washington D.C.

The English-Speaking Union Middle School Debate Program teaches the fundamentals of argumentation and debate to students in grades 5-8. Established in 2011, the program now includes three ESU-sponsored leagues in New York, two in New Jersey and one in Washington, DC. Some 50 public, private, parochial and charter schools participate in the program, engaging more than 1,000 teenagers annually in weekly after-school debate activities designed to develop and hone student’s public speaking, critical thinking, listening and debating skills.

Read Full Story

The New York Times features ESU Middle School Debate

The ESU is pleased to share today’s The New York Times article, “A Diverse Mix of Pupils, Learning Civilized Dissent,” featuring the ESU Middle School Debate program’s New York Debate League. Now in its fourth year, the program, designed to help young adolescents develop critical thinking and language arts skills through public speaking, has reached more than 2,300 students in grades 5 to 8 in New York and New Jersey. There are nearly 900 individual debates through this program annually.

The article underscores one of the Middle School Debate program’s strengths—bringing together students from various backgrounds that, as Brianna Scott (a seventh grader at Success Academy Harlem West) says, “prepare[s] you to go out into the world.”

Read the article here