Respondeo etsi Mutabor: The Comment and Response Assignment, Young Scholars, and the Promise of Liberal Education

Abstract

This essay celebrates Young Scholars in Writing’s first ten years by considering the journal’s Comment and Response section. It locates the activity of commenting on and responding to peer scholarship at the heart of traditional education in rhetoric, argues for an approach that emphasizes controversia, the more or less Ciceronian notion of considering both or all sides of a question, details the comment and response assignment at Furman University, and considers several benefits of commenting on and responding to peer scholarship.