Our group of communication, linguistic, and adult education scholars from three CUNY campuses propose this panel to explore the question: What does a decolonized Public Speaking course look like? This panel will present the mid-point findings of a year-long project supported by a CUNY BRESI grant, including some of the problems we encountered in the field and in the traditional pedagogy used in the course. Traditional Public Speaking courses in the United States teach a narrow and ethnocentric view of what makes an effective speech. Little room is allowed for diverse cultural perspectives and little to no acknowledgement that different communities value different styles of public speech.Though our research is focused specifically on Public Speaking courses, the lessons we’ve learned are applicable to any course with a speech or presentation requirement.