Who Are We?
A global association dedicated to promoting debate across the world.
AGD believes that interscholastic competitive debate is universally valuable because it promotes self-expression, cultural understanding, academic exchange, critical thinking, tolerance, and civic discourse. AGD is committed to connecting high school-level debate organizations across the world and to overcoming social, economic, and institutional barriers to debate competitions. AGD works to accomplish these goals by empowering local students to compete in debate, both by supporting existing debate competitions across the world and by organizing new debate tournaments in partnership with local community leaders.
Upcoming Tournaments
To view all upcoming tournaments, please click here.
2017 Beijing Season Opener
Hosted at the Canadian International School of Beijing
The AGD is pleased to announce the Third Annual AGD - CISB Season Opener Invitational, taking place on October 21st. The tournament is open to students from both international and local schools and will offer high school and middle school divisions.
Registration and more information can be found here.
2017 Shanghai Fall Regional
Hosted at Shanghai Harrow International School
The AGD is pleased to announce the International Division of the 2017 NHSDLC Shanghai Fall Regional Debate Tournament, taking place from the 21st-22nd of October. The tournament is open to students from both international and local schools and will offer high school and middle school divisions.
Registration and more information can be found here.
2017 Beijing Fall Regional
Hosted at Tsinghua International School
The AGD is pleased to announce the International Division of the 2017 NHSDLC Beijing Fall Regional Debate Tournament, taking place from the 11th-12th of November. The tournament is open to students from both international and local schools and will offer high school and middle school divisions.
Registration and more information can be found here.
Overview
The Association for Global Debate (AGD) is a team of passionate debaters, organizers, teachers, judges, and parents who support the growth of debating across different countries and regions. As a support network, AGD strives to connect high school debating events, leagues, and societies to resources and experts, both local and foreign. We provide free resources for tournament and debate team organizers who need academic, organizational, or financial assistance.
Free Training Resources
AGD and its network of experts have put together a set of high impact development tools to its debating members and affiliates. AGD is committed to improving the quality of debate tournaments everywhere by maintaining a high-quality database of online training and educational materials, such as research guides, manuals, and public domain publications. AGD's academic staff is happy to travel to your city once per year and conduct free in-person training sessions oriented towards prospective or beginner debaters.
Free tournament tabulation systems and assistance
AGD believes that any debate team or educator should be able to host a tournament without enduring a tidal wave of manual data entry. AGD’s team of expert tournament administration and organizers works to provide remote and in-person support for local organizers with the logistics, operation, and tabulation of their tournaments.
Sponsorship for Growing Debating Communities
The Association understands the constraints and challenges facing young debate organizations. The Association forms ties with key partners and sponsors in locations around the world and sources for them financial assistance to start sustainable, quality debating communities and lay the foundations for regional and national debating events.
AGD supports and hosts a variety of international high school debate competitions each year across the world. AGD’s tournaments run using a variety of different formats, depending on the host location. The AGD and its affiliated tournaments all aspire to the highest standards of fairness, promptness, and professionalism.
Policy Advocacy
AGD is engaged in academic research on the impact that debating has on academic performance and career prospects. Through our studies and research, we advocate for changes to education policy that improve the status and resources available for extracurricular activities in general and debate in particular. Through these changes, we hope to improve the communities that our debaters, colleagues, and friends live in.
2017 WINTeR INTeRNaTIoNal
pRoGRamsStanford Invitational Speech & Debate Tournament
2017 Feb 9th-14th
Harvard National Invitational
2017 Feb 16th-21st
Get Involved
Depending on the format and type of tournament that you’re interested in running, we can advise you on which tabulation system to use, ranging from the simple and elegant, to powerful but more challenging software. Details are available here.
Membership Applications
Institutions that are currently hosting debating tournaments in the Asian region are welcome to join the AGD as member competitions. Members are entitled to a suite of support services from AGD that includes tabulation software, fly-in experts, and financial support for meritorious debating projects.
Interested parties may fill out the Application Form below or send an e-mail to applications@agdebate.com with details about their event and can expect a response as soon as possible.
Workshop Requests
AGD regularly sends debating experts to different parts of Asia in order to facilitate learning through free or subsidized workshops. Our team of debating experts have backgrounds in different debating formats, including Public Forum, Public Policy, British Parliamentary, and Austral-Asian style.
Member schools that are interested in our training programs can send an e-mail to workshops@agdebate.com for evaluation and lecturer assignment.
our Team
A brief introduction to the team of debate and education experts that make up the AGD.
John Harper
League Manager
Alex Borwick
Academic Director
David Weeks
President
Gavin Newton-Tanzer
Chairman
Tillman Huett
Academic Co-Director
Liam Mather
Academic Co-Director
Carol St.Gelais
Academic Co-Director
Nicholas Bonvini
Academic Co-Director
- Our partner organizations
We are privileged to partner with some of the best debating organisations in the world in hosting events and curriculum development.
National High School Debate League of China (NHSDLC)
The largest foreign language debate league in the world, the NHSDLC organizes over 75 tournaments across China each year. Regional tournaments vary in size from around 150 students in smaller provinces, to over 300 in larger cities. More than 15,000 students compete annually. The 2017 National Championship drew nearly 500 students, who represented every province in China.
The Yale University
Debate Association
The University of Chicago
Debate Society
Harvard College
Mentors for Urban Debate
University of Pennsylvania
Society for Youth Debate
Contact Information
If you need additional information or any of your questions answered, please do not hesitate to contact us!
