Georgetown Debate Seminar
The Georgetown Debate Seminar is an elite debate summer workshop for high school students with a passion for argumentation. We offer programs policy debate, congressional debate and public speaking. The seminar offers an unparalleled experience with top-tier faculty, a well-crafted curriculum, and an unbeatable location in the nation’s capital! Check back in November for applications for the 2026 Seminar!
Apply now. Initial decisions will be made January 15, 2026. After that, applications decisions will be made on a rolling basis.
Accepted students will receive an email with important information regarding logistics, labs, payment links, etc. If you are an accepted student who has not received this link, please email georgetowndebateseminar@gmail.com.
Application available here.
Administrative Staff
Sherry Hall
Camp Director
Sherry Hall is a life-long debate coach, serving as a debate coach at Harvard University for 36 years. She maintains an active presence in the high school forensics community where she has taught at many summer debate camps and directed the Harvard National Invitational Forensics Tournament from 1988 to 2023. Sherry has been involved with high school summer debate workshops since 1981, first as an instructor and later as a director. She founded and directed the Harvard Debate Council Summer Workshops from 2011 through 2023. She also helped to establish and direct the UH Honors Debate Workshop from 2024 through 2025.
Sherry distinguished herself as one of the top college NDT debate coaches. While working at Harvard she coached two NDT Champions, one CEDA Champion, two ADA Varsity Champions, two Copeland Award winners, two NDT top-speakers, the “Debater of the Decade” for the 2000s, and teams that won every college tournament in varsity division at least once. Sherry was named the Ross K. Smith Coach of the Year in 2005. She also received the Toni Nielson “Best of Forensics” Coach Award in 2014 and was recognized as the “Nicest Person in Debate” by the Redlands tournament in 1995. She was recognized as one of the top five debate coaches for the decades from 1990-1999 and 2000-2009, as well as one of the top five judges for the 1990s. in 2024 she was selected for the Lucy Keele Outstanding Service to the Community award.
Sherry has been active in service to the broader college debate community, serving for seventeen years on the Board of Trustees for the NDT where she was the Treasurer and helped to host the National Debate Tournament for those years. She spearheaded efforts to improve the treatment of women in the activity – starting with launching a grass-roots movement in the 1980s to encourage tournament directors, program directors and high school debate workshops to develop ways to make debate a more welcoming environment for women, culminating with the decades-long effort to draft and pass an anti-harassment policy for the National Debate Tournament. She also created the Healthy Debate Initiative in the early 2000s to try to find ways to make tournaments more humane in terms of hours and the food that they served. This Initiative, as with her gender inclusivity initiative, impacted high school speech and debate tournaments alongside the college community.
Jack Hightower
Residential Life Director
Jack is a senior at Georgetown University and a coach on the debate team there. He has worked as the Residential Life Director at the Georgetown Debate Seminar three times, and this summer will be his fourth summer working at the camp in general.
Besides Georgetown, Jack has coached students at Bellarmine College Prep, Mamaroneck High School, and Woodward Academy. He has coached teams to the late elimination rounds of the top college and high school debate tournaments, including the Tournament of Champions, National Debate Tournament, National Debate Coaches Association National Championship, and more.