History of The NDT
The National Debate Tournament (NDT) began in 1947 at the United States Military Academy at West Point. Twenty-nine schools competed at the first NDT debating: "Resolved: That labor should be given a direct share in the management of industry". It remained at West Point until 1967 when it was assumed by the American Forensic Association in part because of the Vietnam War. Since then the tournament has moved to different member schools each year and only three schools have hosted it twice.
In the first NDT, teams were nominated by committees from their district. This was soon replaced with district qualifying tournaments. Eight, post district tournament, "second round" at-large bids were awarded beginning in 1968 and continuing through 1970, enlarging the field to 44 teams, and two of these second round selections "cleared", or finished in the top sixteen in the preliminary rounds, in 1968, three cleared in 1969 and four of the eight post district tournament qualifiers cleared in 1970.
Prior to 1970, a school could only send one team to the NDT, but the tournament committee relented to pressure from some of the more successful programs and a total of eight schools sent two teams to the 1970 National Debate Tournament that year. The winner of that tournament, designated Kansas "B", would not have been eligible to participate if the one team per school rule had remained in force.
In 1971, the format was amended to assign sixteen at large bids prior to district qualifying tournaments followed by the selection of an additional 36 teams by the districts themselves, enlarging the field to 52 teams in 1971 and 1972. Ten regular season tournaments were designated to be "qualifying tournaments", such that winning one earned that team an automatic NDT berth, and the remainder of the sixteen at large teams were selected by vote of the selection committee.
Since 1992, a limited number of schools, currently six, have been allowed to send a third team. Today, 78 two-person teams attend the NDT; 16 are selected in the first-round at-large process, 46 through the district selections, and 16 in the second-round at-large process.
Mutual preference judging (MPJ) is a relatively recent addition to the NDT. Under MPJ, each debate team ranks the judging pool according to their preferences and judges are selected such that both teams prefer the chosen judge equally (if possible). Attempts are made to place as many mutual "1"s (the highest rating) in rounds, with preference given to the teams with the best record.
The 2011 National Debate Tournament was held at the University of Texas, Dallas, and the 2012 National Debate Tournament was hosted by Emory University.
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