When I was first invited to speech and debate, I was a hardcore conservative. The reason I joined was because I watched many Charlie Kirk debates and thought I had a chance as well. Thinking back now, I was naive, but coming from that unique background I did learn a few things. While most speech and debaters likely joined as already a moderate to a liberal background, I was fully educated by an conservative father. So when I first arrived at my school's debate meeting club, it felt weird that people were talking in liberal point of view. I thought these people were crazy to believe these things. Because all my life I have been educated about the disease of wokeness and the mental health errors that the left had. That's why as the first speech and debate meeting ended, I went on a rampage of questions on why these students would believe such crazy things. Though I was a bit rash at the time, I truly felt that these kids were getting brainwashed into thinking these ways. I tried many ways to convince them that they were wrong, and the more we debated the more tension built up. Then a group of people started laughing and calling me a racist or sexist. They were truly mad about what I said, and I felt so much alienation and anguish and distraught because I always thought of these stances and ideas as something rational and important for our country. After experiencing and talking to more people and learning more throughout the years, my views have softened a ton, and I feel now that I have become quite a liberal myself. Despite that, I have always remembered the time that the students would come up to me and label me as a racist. That experience had enabled me to finally address what I always wanted to say to this amazing but flawed community.

Now, I want to be clear: this isn't an article arguing that one ideology is better than the other. It's an article arguing that speech and debate, an activity built on hearing multiple perspectives, is undermining its own mission by remaining as a one sided community. First, I'll explain why conservatives find S&D less appealing. Second, I'll lay out why that matters for the entire community. Finally, I'll propose concrete solutions for making the space more welcoming.

Why Conservatives Find Speech and Debate Less Appealing

The general problem comes down to the environment. Despite occasional exceptions, conservative viewpoints in S&D tend to be met not just with constructive criticism (which is great and expected) but with mockery and dismissal. While students making political jokes in rounds usually just want to easily connect with their audience, those jokes become truth to the community. When conservative-leaning students hear their deeply held beliefs consistently ridiculed, they become less willing to share their actual views. (In my experience, I chose to close up my views completely, because I felt that even my closest friends would leave me if I did. Thankfully, my friends became more empathetic toward me and I continued to debate them on topics.) Even worse, the potential new members who lean conservative may decide the activity simply isn't for them.

S&D is supposed to represent freedom of expression and open discourse. Instead, it can create an environment fueled with shame for students whose beliefs don't align with the majority. Consider a conservative-leaning student who does have the courage to step into a debate round. On many resolutions, the position that aligns with progressive policy goals tends to be more structurally straightforward to argue: propose a new solution to an existing problem. The conservative position — defending existing institutions that may already have well-known flaws — often requires more nuance and complexity to make persuasive. This doesn't mean conservative arguments are wrong; it means they can be harder to make clearly in a timed speech, which could put those students at a disadvantage on certain topics.

Then there's the judging question. While no study has measured ideological bias among forensics judges specifically, decades of research on confirmation bias demonstrate that evaluators in any context tend to favor arguments consistent with their existing beliefs and scrutinize opposing arguments more critically (Nickerson, 1998). According to Pew Research Center, 58% of K-12 teachers identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party compared to 35% who lean Republican. Since S&D judges are largely drawn from the same educator workforce, there is a legitimate structural concern that unconscious bias could affect how arguments are received — not out of malice, but because confirmation bias is a deeply human tendency.

These factors feed a cycle of exclusion. Conservative students may alter their views under social pressure — not through genuine persuasion, but just to fit in. This breeds resentment and reinforces the very polarization that S&D should be equipped to combat. And the problem extends beyond ideology: S&D primarily markets itself to academically ambitious, college-focused students. People on the outside looking in often just see a competitive intellectual world rather than something genuinely fun and valuable. When the activity appeals almost exclusively to one demographic pipeline, it shouldn't be surprising that the community's ideological composition narrows along with it.

Why This Matters — For Everyone

You might be thinking: so what if S&D skews liberal? Here's why it matters, and not just for conservatives.

The benefits of forensics participation are well-documented. NSDA data shows that debaters have higher GPAs, higher SAT scores in both math and reading/writing, and an 87% increase in analytical skills compared to non-participants (Snider & Lawrence, 2011). Stanford's National Forensic Institute notes that former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan called debate "uniquely suited" to build the critical thinking, communication, and collaboration skills required of modern citizens. When fewer students — conservative or otherwise — participate in the activity, more young people miss out on these skills. This could leave them more vulnerable to misleading rhetoric and less equipped to evaluate the flood of biased information they encounter on social media and partisan news outlets every day.

But the problem isn't just about who's missing from the room. It's also about what happens to the people already in it.

A 2023 study published in the American Political Science Review found that politically homogeneous discussion groups increase both policy polarization and affective polarization — the emotional hostility people feel toward the opposing side. If S&D functions as a largely liberal-leaning space, this research suggests it could unintentionally reinforce the very close-mindedness the activity claims to combat.

This dynamic plays out concretely in rounds. When everyone in the room broadly agrees on a set of political priors, it becomes easier to fall back on those shared assumptions rather than construct genuinely rigorous arguments. An extemper preparing their speech might default to framing that they know will resonate with the room rather than grappling with the full complexity of an issue. Over time, this constant reinforcement of similar perspectives could foster a sense of intellectual superiority that further alienates ideologically diverse students from entering the space.

Research by Jack Zhou on peer group dynamics among high schoolers offers a particularly relevant framework for understanding this problem. Zhou's study of 81 students at a Texas high school found a statistically significant positive correlation between political homogeneity within friend groups and affective polarization. Students in politically homogeneous groups were significantly more polarized than those in mixed groups. Zhou proposes the concept of "belonging-induced echo chambers" — the idea that adolescents' deep psychological need to fit in with their peer group leads them to reinforce shared political views and suppress dissenting ones. In S&D, where peer groups form quickly and tightly around shared competitive experiences, this dynamic is especially potent. The desire to belong — to your team, to your practice group, to the broader forensics community — could drive students to adopt the community's prevailing views not out of genuine conviction, but out of social pressure. That's not persuasion. That's conformity. And conformity is the opposite of what forensics is supposed to teach.

Importantly, this is a two-sided problem. Conservative students who never join S&D miss out on invaluable critical thinking and communication skills. Liberal students already in S&D miss out on having their ideas genuinely challenged by people who see the world differently. Both groups suffer. Both groups become more polarized. And the activity loses its capacity to do what it does best: teach young people to engage thoughtfully with perspectives that aren't their own.

It's worth noting that the picture is more nuanced than a simple "all young people are liberal" narrative. PRRI data shows that while Gen Z adults identify as liberal at 43%, Gen Z teens — the actual high school demographic in S&D — are considerably more moderate, with 44% identifying as centrist and only 24% as liberal. Harvard also noted that Gen Z's margin of support for Democrats shrank dramatically from 25 points in 2020 to just 4 points in 2024. If the broader generation of young people is more politically diverse than S&D's culture suggests, that's evidence that the activity is filtering out viewpoints rather than reflecting the full range of its potential participants.

Solutions
What Competitors Can Do

The root cause of the unwelcoming environment is a lack of empathy toward people who think differently — and a preference for convenience over complexity. Fixing this requires more than just saying "be mindful." It requires practice.

Start with yourself. Ask: why do I believe what I believe? What experiences shaped my views? What values am I really defending when I argue for a particular policy? When you understand your own foundations, it becomes easier to recognize that people on the other side of an issue usually share broadly similar values — security, fairness, community, opportunity — and simply disagree on the best means of achieving them. You are not debating an opponent. You are talking to a person. As Zhou's research demonstrates, the friend groups we form in high school powerfully shape our political identities. Being conscious of that influence — and actively seeking out conversations with people who think differently — is one of the most concrete things any competitor can do to resist the pull of belonging-induced echo chambers.

When you're in a round, remember the stakeholders. If you're making a joke at the expense of a political group, ask yourself whether a teammate who quietly holds those views would feel welcome at that moment. If the answer is no, find a different way to make your point.

What Coaches Can Do

Coaches set the culture of their teams. Actively encourage students to engage seriously with viewpoints they disagree with — not as strawmen to knock down, but as positions held by reasonable people for understandable reasons. Create practice environments where students are regularly assigned to argue positions they personally oppose, and where doing so well is praised rather than treated as uncomfortable.

When students make dismissive comments about an entire political perspective, treat it as a coaching moment — not to police beliefs, but to raise the standard of argumentation. A debater who can't steel-man the opposing view hasn't done enough preparation.

What Judges Can Do

Judges should evaluate the quality of argumentation, evidence, and delivery — not whether they personally agree with the conclusion. This is already the standard in theory, but confirmation bias research tells us that upholding this standard requires active effort. Judges can push back against their own biases by asking themselves after each round: did I evaluate all speakers by the same criteria, or did I give more generous interpretations to arguments I already agreed with?

Tournament-provided judge training could include a brief module on cognitive bias in evaluative settings, drawing on research.

What Tournament Directors Can Do

Open the doors wider. Advertise S&D not just as a college-application booster for high achievers, but as a place where anyone who likes to argue, perform, or think about big questions belongs. The more demographically diverse the pipeline into the activity, the more ideologically diverse the community will naturally become.

Consider implementing anonymous balloting for preliminary rounds where feasible, removing school affiliations from judge ballots, and ensuring that hired judge pools reflect a range of perspectives.

What the NSDA and National Organizations Can Do

The NSDA should examine its resolution-writing processes to ensure that topics don't consistently favor one political framing over another. This doesn't mean manufacturing artificial balance — it means being conscious of whether the structural advantage on a given topic consistently falls on the same ideological side across a season.

National organizations should also invest in outreach to schools and communities that are underrepresented in forensics — including schools in politically conservative areas — and ensure that marketing materials reflect the full range of students who could benefit from the activity, not just those who already fit the existing mold.

The Bigger Picture

S&D's competitive structure inherently rewards persuasion over open-mindedness. Competitors adopt a must-win mentality, prioritizing judge approval over genuine exploration of complex ideas. This creates shallow engagement with nuance and discourages the kind of authentic intellectual curiosity that makes forensics valuable in the first place. The flaw lies not with individual competitors but with a system — including judges, coaches, and officials — that doesn't sufficiently prioritize open-minded communication alongside competitive excellence.

This situation in speech and debate reflects real-world problems we see today between people of different ideologies. Both sides of the political spectrum are becoming more polarized. Families are being torn apart over politics. Friendships are being destroyed over beliefs. Our activity — one that was established as a space for nonviolent, open communication — has been feeding into the same dynamics it should be helping to cure. That can change, but only if we're willing to look honestly at the culture we've built and ask whether it's truly as open as we claim it is.

Because at the end of the day, speech and debate teaches its participants something rare and valuable: how to listen to someone you disagree with and respond with reason instead of contempt. If we can't practice that within our own community, how can we expect the rest of the world to do it?