Claremont Summer 2025

Debate and Leadership/Professional Communication Institutes

Now in its 26th year, Claremont Summer offers innovative and exceptional debate and leadership instructional sessions for middle school and high school students. Claremont Summer is held at the distinguished Claremont McKenna College, one of the nation’s top liberal arts colleges. Hundreds of students from the US and abroad (e.g., China, Germany, Jordan, Korea, Canada, Singapore, Kuwait, Mexico, France, Indonesia, United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong, United Kingdom, India, Japan) attend each year. The details for applications (application packets, fees, and deadlines) for Claremont Summer 2025 will be available soon on this page.

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Claremont Summer 2025 Programs

  • June 16-20 Middle School Scholars

    Programming creates opportunities for oral- and written-intensive practice for academic communication, professional communication, and leadership settings. Middle school students will learn effective public speaking, discussion, and multimedia presentation techniques while guided by a team of dedicated coaches.

  • June 21-26 Middle School Debate, Session 1

    Debate instruction is in the Public Debate Program (PDP) format. The 3-on-3 debate format/curriculum is one of the most popular designs for debate and public speaking training in the world, with more than 40,000 teachers and students involved annually. PDP students have won US high school debate championships in both policy and Lincoln-Douglas debating, and enjoyed further success in Public Forum, CHSSA Parliamentary, World Schools, and varied other formats.

  • July 8 - 14 High School International Debate

    Debate instruction features World Schools debate, used by secondary schools internationally, and British Parliamentary, which is the primary format for colleges and universities worldwide. This is the only summer program offering training in British Parliamentary which is essential for debating in college and university. Students will have the opportunity to audition for Claremont’s International Public Debate Program. Claremont’s IPDP/Team USA has organized international debating for over a decade.

  • July 14-20 High School Leadership & Professional Communication

    Programming creates opportunities for oral- and written-intensive practice in academic and professional communication and leadership management settings. High school students students will learn effective public speaking, tools for curating thoughtful discourse, and multimedia presentation techniques. Additionally, students will learn tools for successful project management in a club/organization, interview preparation, digital and social media marketing, and an academic conferences (opportunities for awards for competitive conference papers and presentations).

  • July 19 - 26 Middle School Debate, Session 2 (SuperSession)

    In addition to the curriculum offered in Middle School Debate Session 1 (see description for Session 1), this SuperSession integrates a summer championship tournament and additional instructional hours. The program is designed for students to participate in one or both sessions.

What Parents and Students Say

  • "I'm moved to recognize the impact of great leadership and education. After the first day of Debate camp, my daughter had the largest grin and thanked us for signing her up for the camp. Clearly debate is not a mere job for you but a cause and a passion. I thank you for an amazing debate camp experience for my daughter and her friend. The long term impact of the positive culture and one on one discussions she had with each of you will impact her as she progresses through life."

    Parent of Student in Grade 8

  • "John Meany is a living, breathing national treasure. Anyone who has the opportunity to study with him should afford themselves of the rare opportunity to study with the Mozart of rhetoric, speech, and debate of our age!"

    Parent, molecular biologist/patent attorney

  • "I absolutely loved participating in the Claremont Summer High School Leadership & Communication Program last year... The program genuinely helped me with my confidence during junior year. Thanks to this amazing opportunity, I found my passion in debate and want to pursue this in the future!"

    Student in Grade 12

  • "The memories that I have made at your camp are among the best I have ever had."

    Student in Grade 8

  • "Thank you for giving my daughter the opportunity to attend this summer. She was new to the program and understandably nervous. But she loved the program and was so happy that her hard work paid off. It was a unique program and we hope that she can attend every summer!"

    Parent of Student in Grade 6

  • "I want to thank [Maya Kurkhill and John Meany] for all of your efforts to promote middle school debate and educate students, teachers, and parents. You have had a tremendous impact on our family. Debate has become a central focus of my son's academic life and I credit a lot of that to the time he has spent with you over the last several summers. You have given him a much more solid foundation than he would have had otherwise. My son has reaped all of the usual benefits of debate - an organized approach to arguments, an understanding that there are two sides to most every topic, the importance of solid research when making a case, and the comfort, fluency, and persuasive abilities that come with frequent public speaking."

    Parent of Student in Grade 9

ABOUT THE PROGRAMS

  • The Claremont Colleges, consisting of five extraordinarily prestigious and highly selective undergraduate colleges (Claremont McKenna, Harvey Mudd, Pitzer, Pomona, Scripps) and two graduate schools (Claremont Graduate University and the Keck Graduate Institute of Applied Life Sciences), are located 35 miles east of Los Angeles in the City of Claremont. The Fiske Guide to Colleges noted that the Claremont Consortium constituted “a collection of intellectual resources unmatched in America.”

    The Debate Union and Claremont Summer programs are centered at Claremont McKenna College (CMC). US News & World Report ranks CMC among the nation’s top ten liberal arts colleges (9th). The College Consensus, aggregated data from multiple rankings, lists CMC at fourth among liberal arts colleges. In an assessment by students, three of the Claremont Colleges ranked among the top 5 institutions – CMC, Pomona, and Harvey Mudd.

    Claremont Summer students have the opportunity to use the outstanding facilities and resources of some of the nation’s top institutions of higher education during debate and leadership communication programming. Admissions officers make presentations to high school students; students receive ancillary essay writing instruction from college writing consultants.

  • It is the sole official summer program of the Middle School/High School Public Debate Program, arguably the largest debate network in the world, with more than 800,000 teacher and student participants in 36 countries. Although there are other summer programs that may offer instruction in middle school and high school debating in the Public Debate Program format (the popular 3-on-3 debate model), they rarely teach from the PDP textbook and other curricular materials, do not know the educational and professional communication foundations of the format (undermining instruction), have not examined the educational literature or assessment documents serving as the basis for the PDP design, and do not have the expertise to teach highly advanced argumentation and refutation techniques.

  • Civics in Action is the leadership and professional communication initiative led by John Meany. The program integrates best practices for public speaking, negotiation, interpersonal engagement, argumentation, organization management, and writing for academic and career success. The training has been used by businesses, non-profit organizations, government agencies, and educational institutions in the US and other countries. Students attending the Middle School Scholars session or the High School Leadership and Professional Communication program will be able to take advantage of Claremont’s novel presentation curricular materials and techniques, as well as work with staff of Claremont McKenna’s Center for Writing and Public Discourse. Select students will be invited to participate in Civics in Action and other leadership projects during the following academic year. For example, students were able to participate at the 2016 Conference on Nuclear Politics. Summer students will be invited to attend Claremont’s 2024 Conference.

  • John Meany, Director of Forensics at Claremont McKenna College and the administrator of the Claremont Colleges Debate Union, coordinates summer debate programming. He has directed and taught more than 175 summer debate and leadership communication workshop sessions in the US and abroad. He directs Claremont’s Public Debate Program and Civics in Action outreach initiatives and other major educational outreach projects. He has coached five college national debate champions.

    John Meany is the author or co-author of 10 debate textbooks and more than a score of teacher guides, research manuals and other debate instruction texts. He was a major sponsor of parliamentary debate formats (that is, debate formats featuring at least one element of parliamentary procedure, although parliamentary debate models may have no other common features) in the western US, establishing and hosting the first college, high school, and middle school parliamentary debate tournaments. His college teams have participated in the World Universities Debating Championship (international parliamentary debate model) since the 1980s; he established the US Universities Debate Championship (US championship in the international/WUDC parliamentary format, aka British Parliamentary Debate – now the largest national college debate championship) and hosted the first 3 US championship tournaments.

    He developed secondary school national championships for US and international teams in the MSPDP, HSPDP, YPDP, WSDC, and WPD formats. The middle school championship is now one of the largest single-event competitive debate tournaments in the world with more than 1,300 participants after qualifying league events. He proposed and developed the California High School Speech Association (CHSSA) parliamentary debate format, arguably the most popular secondary school debate event in the state. He has written CHSSA parliamentary debate topics for the state championship for the past 4 years. He created the Civics in Action leadership program and sponsors its academic conference series. He is a communication and debate consultant for higher education institutions, businesses, and non-profit organizations.