Founded
in 1971 as the Southwest Cross Examination Debate
Association, CEDA is now the primary national association
promoting policy topic intercollegiate academic debate.
In cooperation with the National Debate Tournament
Committee and the American Debate Association, CEDA
formulates the annual intercollegiate policy debate topic
used in tournament competition throughout the nation.
CEDA acts as a tournament sanctioning agent, providing
through its Constitution and By-Laws a framework for
normalizing tournament practices and procedures. Throughout
the tournament season, CEDA calculates the National
Sweepstakes Standings, the national and regional rankings
of member institutions based on compiled tournament
results.
The association also hosts an annual National Championship
Tournament that brings together over 200 individual debate
teams from across the nation to compete for a national team
championship.
One of CEDA's most important functions is to serve as a
professional association for scholars and teachers in the
field of applied argumentation and debate. In addition to
sponsoring scholarly programs on issues of interest to
association members at the annual convention of the
National Communication Association, CEDA has organized two
indigenous scholarly assessment conferences: The 1991 St.
Paul 20th Anniversary Assessment Conference, and the 2001
Tahoe Conference on Academic Debate. CEDA also
publishes Contemporary
Argumentation and Debate: The Journal of the Cross
Examination Debate Association, a
refereed scholarly journal that serves as the primary
outlet for monographs and essays addressing issues related
to the theory and practice of academic debate.