Wie jedes Jahr fand zum Jahreswechsel die englischsprachige Weltmeisterschaft im Debattieren (World Universities Debating Championship - WUDC) statt. Der Austragungsort war Mexiko-Stadt. Das Turnier begann am 27.12.17 und endete am 04.01.18. Nach neun Vorrunden standen am Silvesterabend die in die KO-Runden breakenden Teams fest. Auf der WUDC treten Teams in drei Sprachkategorien an, EPL (English as a Proficient Language), ESL (English as a Second Language) und EFL (English as a Foreign Language). EPL-klassifizierende Teams können lediglich im offenen Break weiterkommen, ESL-Teams je nach Ranking im offenen Break oder im ESL-Break und EFL-Teams je nach Ranking in einem der drei Breaks. ...

In March 2008, I sat with a few friends at the University of Porto, Faculty of Law, and we decided to create “the debate society”. That made some sense at the time since we felt like we were completely alone: there was no other debate society in Portugal, international tournaments sounded like something completely out of reach, and we didn’t know any other debaters. Many didn’t even know what debate was: professors and students were afraid we would be a façade for some political party and the idea that debate could have a place outside partisan politics sounded weird to ...