Ben Voth

My teaching, research and service is mission is to equip individuals to have their voice. My primary means of doing this is through teaching, coaching, instruction and writing about debate. As a professor my scholarly focus is on how debate works to improve the human condition. The primary mechanism for this is a theoretical concept I pioneered and known as: discursive complexity. Discursive complexity is the capacity of an individual, group, or society to consider multiple points of view. High discursive complexity is good and low discursive complexity is bad. Debate encourages the emergence and practice of high discursive complexity. Ultimately debate is a catalyst for the prevention and recovery from the worst of human symbolic habits: genocide. I have worked around the world in Israel, India, Rwanda, and Mexico. I have taught at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC and the Bush Presidential Library in Dallas. My work has been quoted the Washington Post, Rush Limbaugh, and NPR. I have coached more than 25 international, national, and state champions of collegiate speech and debate events.