Bard Prison Initiative
The Bard Debate Union is proud to be working to integrate debate training and education into the innovative and world-renown Bard Prison Initiative – a program through which incarcerated individuals across 6 New York State prisons enroll full-time in coursework and earn degrees from Bard College. David Register – Deputy Director of the Bard Debate Union, Faculty Fellow and Director of Debate at BPI – held the first debate practice at Eastern NY Correctional Facility in the summer of 2013 and has been coaching the team ever since. The Bard Prison Initiative Debate Union now has over 20 members and meets with David weekly to explore debate topics, discuss research, and hold practice debates. The team hosted its first public-style debate in April 2014 against West Point. Since then the team has had 18 competitive debates, including a debate against Harvard in September 2015 that garnered worldwide attention! Below is a complete list of the debates in which the team has competed:
Debate #1 (April 2014): BPI Debate Union vs. West Point (Topic – Resolved: The United Stated federal government should invest in a national high speed rail system; Winner – Bard)
Debate #2 (September 2014): BPI Debate Union vs. University of Vermont (Topic – Resolved: NATO should be immediately disbanded; Winner – Bard)
Debate #3 (April 2015): BPI Debate Union vs. West Point (Topic – Resolved: The United States federal government should nationalize the pharmaceutical industry; Winner – West Point)
Debate #4 (September 2015): BPI Debate Union vs. Harvard (Topic – Resolved: Public schools in the United States should have the ability to deny enrollment to undocumented students; Winner – Bard)
Debate #5 (April 2016): BPI Debate Union vs. West Point (Topic – Resolved: American corporations should not have constitutional rights; Winner – Bard)
Debate #6 (September 2016): BPI Debate Union vs. Brown (Topic – Resolved: The President of the United States should be elected by popular vote; Winner – Brown)
Debate #7 (April 2017): BPI Debate Union vs. West Point (Topic – Resolved: The rapid automation of labor does more harm than good; Winner – Bard)
Debate #8 (December 2017): BPI Debate Union vs. Morehouse (Topic – Resolved: Race-based affirmative action in college and university admissions should be eliminated; Winner – Bard)
Debate #9 (April 2018): BPI Debate Union vs. West Point (Topic – Resolved: The United States should nationalize its water resources; Winner – Bard)
Debate #10 (November 2018): BPI Debate Union vs. University of Pennsylvania (Topic – Resolved: Puerto Rico should be a U.S. state; Winner – Bard)
Debate #11 (April 2019): BPI Debate Union vs. University of Cambridge (Topic – Resolved: All states should have a right to nuclear weapons; Winner – Bard)
Debate #12 (November 2019): BPI Debate Union vs. Duke University (Topic – Resolved: The United States Federal Government should provide substantial support for clinical trials of human germ-line genome editing; Winner – Bard)
Debate #13 (December 2021): BPI Debate Union vs. Morehouse (Topic – Resolved: The celebration of Malcolm X as an autodidact does more harm than good; Winner – Bard)
Debate #14 (April 2022): BPI Debate Union vs. University of Pennsylvania (Topic – Resolved: The United States should provide monetary reparations for Indian boarding schools; Winner – University of Pennsylvania)
Debate #15 (December 2022): BPI Debate Union vs. Brown (Topic – Resolved: The number of justices on the US Supreme Court should be increased; Winner – Bard)
Debate #16 (May 2023): BPI Debate Union vs. Harvard (Topic – Resolved: the corporatization of higher education does more harm than good; Winner – Harvard)
Debate #17 (December 2023): BPI Debate Union vs. University of Vermont (Topic – Resolved: the United States should adopt a Universal Basic Incoming; Winner – Bard)
Debate #18 (September 2024): BPI Debate Union vs. United States Air Force Academy (Topic – Resolved: the United States should ratify the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea; Winner – Bard)
The BPI Debate Union is currently 14-4!
For more information about the Bard Prison Initiative, check out the website: http://bpi.bard.edu
