2026/2027 Big Questions Brief

Our 2026/2027 Big Questions Brief is 381 pages long, in-depth Topic Analyses by Yair Fraifeld, Thadeus Smith, and Rachel Mauchline, 200+ cards, plus General Information, Framework suggestions, and more! Our briefs for Public Forum Debate are powerful educational tools because of their structure, quality, and quantity of included arguments. Each brief includes topic analyses by highly reputable coaches and alumni, background information on the topic, and heavily warranted arguments on each side — every argument paired with blocks and answers so you're prepared for anything. As educators, we believe it is important to help students learn argumentation, research, and critical thinking skills fostered by debate. Our briefs are designed to facilitate real learning — helping students succeed in their rounds and build a foundation of expertise that benefits them for a lifetime.

From the Editor

The Big Questions topic this year is Resolved: Technological progress has surpassed humanity's ability to use it ethically. The topic does not ask whether technology has caused harm, and it does not ask whether people are behaving badly. It asks whether one thing has outpaced another, which means any serious case has to explain how it is measuring both sides of that comparison. Something worth flagging early is that this topic invites catastrophizing. There is a lot of writing available that describes technological risk in dramatic terms, and some of it is rigorous while a fair amount of it is not. Pro teams should make sure their case does not turn into a list of frightening possibilities, because a list of harms shows that technology is powerful rather than that our ethics have fallen behind. Con teams have the opposite problem, which is treating every new regulation as proof that the system is working. Neither confidence nor alarm counts as an argument on its own. The rounds that hold up are the ones that treat this as a comparison and actually do the work of measuring. This debate is about more than artificial intelligence. Nuclear weapons, gene editing, environmental engineering, surveillance, and automated finance all raise the same question about whether our judgment has kept pace with our capability. Some of the better arguments for the Big Questions debates this year will come from teams willing to look past the obvious examples and into the historical record, where there is real evidence on both sides about how societies have handled a technology that arrived faster than the rules governing it. Handled well, this topic can be one of the more rewarding ones of the season. You will pull from philosophy, history, law, and policy, and you will have to think carefully about burden and evidence rather than just about who has the scarier impact. The goal is not to prove that the future is bright or that it is bleak. It is to show that you can take a genuinely contested question and handle it with precision, honesty, and respect for the best version of the other side. That skill will serve you long after this season ends. Yair Fraifeld Editor-in-Chief