Board Members
Chairman
Dr. Ben Voth is an academic expert in debate, argumentation, communication, public speaking and rhetoric. He is specialist on questions of genocide, political debate, humor and politics, and general public controversies. He has published four books on how individual communication abilities can positively change the world:
Books Published: James Farmer Jr.: The Great Debater (Lexington Books, 2017); Social Fragmentation and the Decline of American Democracy: The End of the Social Contract (Springer, 2017, with Robert E. Denton Jr.); and The Rhetoric of Genocide: Death as a Text (Lexington Books, 2014 and 2016).
His most current book Debate as Global Pedagogy: Rwanda Rising (Lexington Books, 2020) details a variety of efforts globally to combat genocide with debate instruction while focusing on the unique events of the 1994 Rwandan genocide and a 25 year anniversary debate institute he helped lead for 400 high school students and more than 50 high school teachers in Rwanda in 2019.
The Rhetoric of Genocide won the American Forensic Association’s 2015 top national book award, the Daniel Rohrer Memorial Outstanding Research Award, for research in the field of speech and debate. His communication collaborations with national and international institutions include: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., the George W. Bush Presidential Center, the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation, the U.S. State Department and the government of Rwanda.
As director of speech and debate, Voth has coached more than twenty five national and international champions of collegiate speech and debate events including International Public Debate Association’s varsity competitions, novice policy debate, persuasive speaking, communication analysis, and impromptu speaking.
