Freedom from Speech (Encounter Broadside) by Greg Lukianoff

Author:Greg Lukianoff [Lukianoff, Greg]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781594038082
Publisher: Encounter Books
Published: 2014-09-08T16:00:00+00:00

IMPOSSIBLE EXPECTATIONS: TRIGGER WARNINGS

In May 2014, the New York Times called attention to a new arrival on the college campus: trigger warnings. Seemingly overnight, colleges and universities across America have begun fielding student demands that their professors issue content warnings before covering any material that might evoke a negative emotional response. By way of illustration, the Times article (titled “Warning: The Literary Canon Could Make Students Squirm”) pointed to a Rutgers student’s op-ed requesting trigger warnings for The Great Gatsby, which apparently “possesses a variety of scenes that reference gory, abusive and misogynistic violence,” and Mrs. Dalloway, which the student called “a disturbing narrative” that discusses “suicidal inclinations” and “post-traumatic experiences.” The article generated significant discussion, with readers questioning why college students would need trigger warnings – which are generally billed as a way to help those who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a serious mental-health condition – before reading the type of material that any college student should expect to encounter on any college campus.

The New Republic’s Jenny Jarvie has traced the genesis of trigger warnings to online chat rooms and message boards frequented by survivors of highly traumatizing experiences like rape. In her March 2014 article “Trigger Happy,” Jarvie noted that the warnings, which “began as a way of moderating Internet forums for the vulnerable and mentally ill,” spread through feminist forums like wildfire, prompting writer Susannah Breslin to proclaim in April 2010 that feminists were using the term “like a Southern cook applies Pam cooking spray to an overused nonstick frying pan.” From there, the phenomenon mushroomed into a staggeringly broad advisory system that, as Jarvie explained, now covers “topics as diverse as sex, pregnancy, addiction, bullying, suicide, sizeism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, slut shaming, victim-blaming, alcohol, blood, insects, small holes, and animals in wigs.” In May 2012, the Awl’s Choire Sicha penned an article titled “When ‘Trigger Warning’ Lost All Its Meaning.” In it, Sicha discussed “how far afield ‘trigger warnings’ have gone,” calling the trend “insulting” and “infantilizing.”

Despite such criticism, trigger warnings are gaining traction – and are no longer confined to Internet forums. The leap from online communities to college campuses is not surprising, as campuses have long been at the vanguard of accommodating student, faculty, and administrator demands for emotionally and intellectually comfortable environments. Indeed, while serving as president of Barnard College, Judith Shapiro went so far as to tell faculty members “that she thought no Barnard student should be uncomfortable in any class.” Shapiro’s comment highlights the current collision of visions regarding the role that a college should take. Some believe that campuses have a duty to shield students from difficult material, while others espouse the older view, popularized by colleges like Yale in the 1970s, that colleges should be places where students are encouraged to “think the unthinkable, discuss the unmentionable, and challenge the unchallengeable.” This contrast is stark and has certainly unsettled many professors.

In early 2014, Oberlin University took a dramatic step toward heightening students’ intellectual comfort by posting a trigger-warning policy on its website.

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