Five Suggested Debate Topics for 2024-25

Sixty-one delegates from 25 states, the National Speech and Debate Association, the National Association for Urban Debate Leagues, the National Catholic Forensic League and the National Debate Coaches Association attended the NFHS Policy Debate Topic Selection Meeting August 4-6, 2023 in Portland, Oregon. Sixteen topic reports were presented by authors who, for the past 12 months, researched each topic area.

State delegates and participants deliberated for three days to determine the final five topic areas: Agricultural Subsidies, American Arctic Policy, Critical Infrastructure, Intellectual Property Rights, and Nuclear Weapons Reduction.

Serving on the 2023 Wording Committee were: Rich Edwards, Texas (Interim Chairperson); Eric Oddo, Illinois; Colleen Mooney, Pennsylvania; Jennifer Adams, Texas; Debnil Sur, California; Brett Bricker, Kansas; and Lauren Ivey, Georgia.

Balloting for the 2024-25 national high school debate topic will take place in a two-fold process. During the months of September and October, coaches and students will have the opportunity to discuss the five selected problem areas. The first ballot will narrow the topics to two. A second ballot will be distributed to determine the final topic. Each state, the NSDA, the NAUDL, the NCFL and the NDCA will conduct voting in November and December to determine the favored topic area. In January, the NFHS will announce the 2024-25 national high school debate topic and resolution. The final topic resolution will be posted on the NFHS website on the Speech, Debate, Theatre page and sent to state associations and affiliate members.

Synopsis of Problem Areas and Resolutions for 2024-2025

PROBLEM AREA I: AGRICULTURAL SUBSIDIES

Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially decrease its agricultural subsidies for domestic agriculture.

The time is ripe for an agricultural subsidies topic. United States agriculture plays a profoundly important role our day-to-day lives, a fact that has become increasingly apparent for students and families across the country due to steadily rising food costs and grocery bills. The decisions over what types of agricultural products we choose to prioritize have enormous effects on everything from the overall health of the economy, to food options (or lack thereof) that we see on grocery store shelves. Despite the fact that everyone needs food to survive, the vast majority of people know shockingly little about how policy decisions at the federal level shape the food choices we are presented with over the course of our lives. There are obvious connections for all students to this topic, because all students make choices about what to eat and millions of students eat school lunches each year. Food is one of the largest expenses in the American household and our federal food policies directly affect food deserts, school lunches, urban and rural farming, and access to healthy/affordable food options.

Under the proposed topic, affirmatives would argue to eliminate particular types of subsidies (crop insurance, disaster preparedness, direct payments etc.), or to substantially decrease agricultural support through subsidies for particular crops. Students can access advantage ground that includes arguments about trade, international relations, the environment, and public health, among many others. The topic is large enough to support significant affirmative creativity and flexibility while also having strong functional limits due to a strong literature base about which subsidies are helpful and which ones artificially manipulate markets and food options. Additionally, one of the strengths of this topic is compared to past domestic resolutions is that there is a clear need for federal action as subsidies are provided at the federal level and thus state government policies will have very little effect on the topic.

On the negative, students will be presented with a robust array of built-in disadvantages and case arguments that ensure debatability and clash for both novice and varsity competitors alike. There are a substantial number of core topic disadvantages that students could read, including food prices and the health of the agricultural industry as well as core case offense with the subsidies good/bad debate. The strength of the farm lobby will also ensure a year of excellent politics debates. Students can choose from a variety of counterplans such as caps/ limits, condition counterplans, removing trade barriers, and international actors. Negative teams have access to substantial literature about why subsidies are good and shouldn’t be decreased, such as the negative impact removal of subsidies would have on international relations and the economy. Students can also enjoy a wealth of interesting and relevant Kritik literature that critiques American agriculture production from lenses based on race, xenophobia, capitalism, settler colonialism, and others. This resolution is elegant, simple, and grounded in the literature, and the nature of the topic has massively changed since the last time it was debated in high school (1986-1987) and college (2008-2009) when the provisions of the Farm Bill were quite different and yet we know that the topic can sustain a full year of engaging and competitive debates.  Not voting for agriculture would be a serious mis-steak.

PROBLEM AREA II: AMERICAN ARCTIC POLICY

Resolved: The United States should substantially increase its military presence and/or economic development in the Arctic region.

By virtue of both its standing as a superpower and its purchase of Alaska in 1867, the United States is an Arctic nation; however the Arctic has seldom figured prominently in US domestic policy.  Conditions in the Arctic have always been so extreme, the distances so vast, that even rivals like the United States and Russia were forced to cooperate there. But the Arctic is warming faster than anywhere else on the planet in both temperature and politics. Sea routes that sailors and explorers have dreamed about for centuries are starting to open. The promise of Arctic riches—oil, minerals, trade routes, even fish—have started to draw interest from far outside the traditional Arctic States. While there have been several decades of cooperation in the region with other Arctic nations, the invasion of Ukraine by Russia has changed the political paradigm of the region in major ways. The Arctic is of unique and growing strategic military importance to all Americans.

Policy Debaters have a unique position to be able to debate an Arctic Policy in these turbulent times. The high school policy debate topic has not directly dealt with the Arctic and this would be new and unique ground to debate. The topic encompasses subjects such as potential conflict, the environment, geopolitical politics, political cooperation, indigenous rights, resource extraction among others.

PROBLEM AREA III: CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE

Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially increase its critical infrastructure protection of the chemical and/or nuclear sectors in the United States.

U.S. critical infrastructure is seen and used every day, yet serious vulnerabilities continue to threaten the safety and security of our national infrastructure. The chemical and nuclear sectors depend on and overlap with many other critical areas such as the transportation, energy, wastewater, and agricultural sectors. The failure of one could lead to the failure of all. Highlighted flaws within these sectors include natural hazards, cyber security, supply chain resilience, crimes, and terrorism -- problems that will only worsen as long as they are ignored.

The chemical sector is an essential component of the U.S. economy that controls potentially dangerous chemicals and, on which other critical infrastructure sectors rely. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) specifically highlights crimes and terrorism as the largest threat to the chemical sector. It calls for federal management, surveillance, and assessment programs. The nuclear sector comprises nuclear power plants, uranium mines and mills, enrichment facilities, waste storage, disposal sites, research reactors, and other critical installations. The safety, reliability, and proliferation resistance of this system is governed by stringent regulations from various federal agencies such as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the Department of Energy (DOE). Additionally, the US has an extensive network for monitoring nuclear threats worldwide through intelligence-gathering sources which can include a variety of data landscapes ranging from satellite imagery to online discussions. The critical infrastructure provides certain reliability to our civilian nuclear capabilities.

Affirmatives can discuss the economics behind, the science comprising, and the physical aspects that make up both sectors. Core affirmatives explore increased cyber protection of plants, manufacturing guidelines, storage and transport methods, and terrorism preparedness plans. Negative teams challenge workability, economic disruption, political feasibility, funding trade-offs, and alternative ways to address sector protections. Our government holds the potential to solve these issues and must continue to protect these capabilities in a safe and effective manner.

PROBLEM AREA IV: INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS

Resolved: The United States federal government should significantly strengthen its protection of domestic intellectual property rights in copyrights, patents, and/or trademarks.

The importance of intellectual property rights stretches across all areas of American life from the technology we use, to the pharmaceutical drugs we rely on, to the entertainment that we enjoy. Not only has the protection of intellectual property rights (IPR) been a part of United States innovation policy since the country was founded, but to see its relevance in our own day-to-day lives we only need to look at the rise of AI created art, soaring drug prices, or impending release of 1989—Taylor’s version. There is not a single good or service that we enjoy in our daily lives that is not in some way, shape, or form affected by the protection of IPR.

The proposed resolution asks affirmative teams to strengthen IPR in one or more of the three main areas of US IP law: copyrights, patents, or trademarks. This resolution represents a departure from the past two decades of status quo policy that will generate a diverse and deep array of affirmative advantage areas including: technology, climate change, pharmaceutical drugs, computing/artificial intelligence, art/music, economy, etc.. Potential affirmative cases include legislative, judicial, and executive actions such as legislating changes to the patent application process and either overturning or legislatively overruling key court cases. Likewise, the topic also allows for numerous conversations over the ways in which various minority groups in the United States have not been able to protect their creations and knowledge due to a lack of strong IP protections by taking actions to strengthen groups and individuals ability to protect their original works and knowledges.

Negative teams will be well served by this topic and have numerous options and strategies to generate clash with affirmative cases, because IP protections are generally applied broadly across all industries, affirmative changes to the system will have downstream effects on a wide variety of industries. There will be robust case debate supported by an incredibly deep literature base of authors who disagree with the stated effects of a strong patent system. There are not only several core topic disadvantages but affirmative cases will also generate specific disadvantages based on the plan mechanism or target area. The negative will have a large and interesting set of counterplans including actor counterplans, regulation/reform counterplans, and counterplans that set out to abolish patents altogether. Additionally, there is no shortage of kritik ground on the topic as there are a wide variety of literature bases that are critical of United States IP regimes and IP as a concept.

For an activity that attracts such a large number of students who have at least a partial interest in future legal careers, we as a community have rarely ever debated explicitly legal topics despite high interest and unique educational opportunities of exploring new literature bases. Additionally, IPR has never been a policy topic despite its centrality and importance to our lives. Debates on this topic will be accessible to novices who all can intuitively understand the need to protect original works and inventions while also having a deep enough literature base to keep even the most advanced debaters interested and engaged throughout the competitive season.

PROBLEM AREA V: NUCLEAR WEAPONS REDUCTION

Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially reduce the size and/or restrict the roles of its nuclear weapons arsenal.

Discussions of nuclear weapons are everywhere. From the movie theater to the newspaper to the high school debate classroom, there is interest in almost every constituency with our ultimate destructive weaponry. Despite decades of debates centered on the potential use of the United States nuclear arsenal, the high school debate community has not debated a topic centered on nuclear weapons in over 20 years. And there has arguably never been a better time to engage in a debate than the upcoming debate season, both from a domestic policy and a debate perspective. With the looming threat of use from the Russian Federation and beyond, nuclear policy literature will be ample and accessible. Additionally, with a new Nuclear Posture Review in 2022, United States policy should be stable for the course of the upcoming season, and the direction of generic arguments on the topic should be stable and predictable. In addition, with the upcoming (2023-2024) collegiate debate topic focused on nuclear weapons policy, we have the opportunity for enhanced expertise from around the nation and quality, vetted topic research to begin the season. In addition, the proximity of the topic will allow for an increase in the content knowledge and participation of many judges and coaches, who will have ample experience with a subset of the potential high school topic. Through debate camps, judging and coaching, outside participation in the high school topic is inevitable, and this topic would create the opportunity for that engagement to be elevated in quality and quantity.

This specific wording will allow for students to have an adequate division of affirmative and negative ground that allows for in-depth debates focused on the affirmative case. Too many domestic topics focus on the relationship between state and federal control, which often skirts a focus on the action of the affirmative proposal. Because nuclear policy is solely controlled by the federal government, affirmatives will have quality literature focused on the role of nuclear weapons in deterring the action of adversaries and ability to assure allies. Negative teams will have the opportunity to read disadvantages that contest the core thesis of the affirmative, like the stabilizing deterrent effect that United States nuclear weapons have created. Students would also have access to arguments about the development of novel nuclear technology and the disposal of existing weapons, which are often major concerns among nuclear policy experts. This topic will allow us to have extensive debates that enhance the quality of all our debaters down the road, as they continue to grapple with the ramifications of nuclear use on topics beyond the 2024-2025 season. Debates across the country have shown for years that high school students are enamored by discussions of nuclear policy and the fear of nuclear use. At a moment where this concern is present in policy, pop culture and the broader debate community itself, it is time for the high school community to dive into nuclear policy again.

Read this article from Newsweek, who attended and detailed the 2023 Topic Selection Meeting.