COMM 150: Class, 'marketplace of ideas'

Since we are bound to talk about what's going on in the world in Communications 150, we are going to find issues on which we disagree. And we are bound to give voice to our disagreement. That's good. Arguing issues, in the sense of staking out a position and citing evidence to back it up, is what scholarship is all about. And a university can be described as a "Marketplace of Ideas" -- i.e. a place where ideas are exchanged, and buyers have the freedom to choose the best among competing ideas. The concept is usually traced back to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, who in 1919 said:

If you have no doubt of your premises or your power and want a certain result with all your heart you naturally express your wishes in law and sweep away all opposition...But when men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas...that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out.

The idea and its application in the classroom are explained further in the Wikipedia article on the "Marketplace of Ideas." (I will hand out hard copies so you can keep them.) It is also associated with Thomas Jefferson, who wanted the University of Virginia which he helped establish to "be based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind, to explore and to expose every subject susceptible of its contemplation."

Also a champion of the marketplace of ideas was the French philosopher Voltaire, who added an important wrinkle: You don't have to agree with everybody else in the marketplace. Famously, he wrote another philosopher (an abbot), saying, "Monsieur l'abbé, I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write.'' But I like even better something Voltaire said in his "Essay on Tolerance" published in 1755:

Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so too.

That's what I want us to strive for in our classroom.