College takes the stand against trigger warnings

[Langue_doc]

Should College Come With Trigger Warnings? At Cornell, It's a 'Hard No.'
When the student assembly voted to require faculty to alert students to upsetting educational materials, administrators pushed back.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/12/nyregion/should-college-come-with-trigger-warnings-at-cornell-its-a-hard-no.html

Discuss.

[marshwiggle]

Should College Come With Trigger Warnings? At Cornell, It's a 'Hard No.'
When the student assembly voted to require faculty to alert students to upsetting educational materials, administrators pushed back.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/12/nyregion/should-college-come-with-trigger-warnings-at-cornell-its-a-hard-no.html

Discuss.

If they refused to require faculty to give trigger warnings, that's a good thing (and a no-brainer). Among other things, there's no way anyone could know in advance what might "trigger" someone in a class. Guilty until proven innocent isn't good for a legal system, and it certainly isn't a good idea for an educational institution where open inquiry and discussion is the goal.

[ciao_yall]

From the article:

"I think the response is purposeful in focusing on the wrong part of the resolution," said Valeria Valencia, a senior and the Cornell University Student Assembly president, "turning it into an issue of academic freedom and not one of protecting students, when both things can coexist."

While I agree that students should not be abused by faculty based on who they are, and that faculty have a responsibility as human beings to address sensitive subjects in a sensitive manner...

... at some point students will need to resolve their own trauma so they can function in the world.

And offering students alternative assignments, books, whatever? But isn't this part of the healing/growing process? Learning how others have addressed these difficult experiences in their own lives?

[Sun_Worshiper]

Obviously colleges should not require this kind of thing and Cornell did the right thing.

That said, if an individual professor wants to do it, I see no harm. There is a short documentary that I show in one of my classes that includes a clip of a protester being shot and then shows the protester's dead body in a gruesome way. I let students know beforehand that there will be a moment of shocking violence. Nobody has ever objected and no student has ever left the room.

[Wahoo Redux]

When I taught Faulkner's "Barn Burning," I emailed my one African-American student ahead of time and simply asked if racial slurs would be a problem for her.  It wasn't.

I wonder, do other countries have as many hang-ups as we do (Brexit not withstanding)?

Do other places attempt to use institutional rules to control what people say?

Was the Hamline debacle when academia jumped the shark?

[Parasaurolophus]

I warn my students about shocking or offensive material ahead of time. I see no reason to spring it on them. It also makes for better class discussions, since they're not wasting time talking about the shock.

I also warm my logic students about which unit will be the hardest (proofs). I want them mentally prepared for the month from hell.

I think these are basic courtesies, and everyone should do it, though an official requirement is a little strong.

[marshwiggle]

I warn my students about shocking or offensive material ahead of time. I see no reason to spring it on them. It also makes for better class discussions, since they're not wasting time talking about the shock.

I also warm my logic students about which unit will be the hardest (proofs). I want them mentally prepared for the month from hell.

I think these are basic courtesies, and everyone should do it, though an official requirement is a little strong.

It's very strong since it's impossible to know in advance everything that may offend someone. Everyone is at the mercy of the most *fragile snowflake in the room.


(*Or more likely, the attention hound who pretends to be a fragile snowflake since the onus is on the faculty member to know in advance what complaints are possible. People could make anything up and faculty would be forced to "apologize" (or worse!) if the policy required warnings.)

[Puget]

There are clearly times when a warning is appropriate, like showing graphic content. (Or not even graphic-- I give a warning before the part of a video that includes a cataract surgery, just because I don't want anyone fainting who has a vasovagal phobic response. No one leaves, I just tell them when to look away for a moment if they are sensitive).

However, the research pretty clearly shows that trigger warnings before covering difficult topics do not reduce student distress and in fact sometimes increase anticipatory distress. Other research has found that content warnings on media actually increases viewing due to curiosity.

They also can do harm if used in situations that really don't call for them. For example, I strongly object to issuing a trigger warning before discussing mental health topics, because it contributes to stigma around openly discussing mental health. Instead, I start off by providing resources and encouraging them to add them to their phones, for themselves or someone they know who may need them. Everything I say is aimed at normalizing rather than problematizing discussing mental health and seeking help when needed.

[Wahoo Redux]

Boston Globe: New faculty-led organization at Harvard will defend academic freedom

Lower Deck:

The new Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard is devoted to free inquiry, intellectual diversity, and civil discourse. Leaders are diverse in politics, demographics, disciplines, and opinions but united in their concern for academic freedom.

No small part in this disenchantment is the impression that universities are repressing differences of opinion, like the inquisitions and purges of centuries past. It has been stoked by viral videos of professors being mobbed, cursed, heckled into silence, and sometimes assaulted, and it is vindicated by some alarming numbers. According to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, between 2014 and 2022 there were 877 attempts to punish scholars for expression that is, or in public contexts would be, protected by the First Amendment. Sixty percent resulted in actual sanctions, including 114 incidents of censorship and 156 firings (44 of them tenured professors) — more than during the McCarthy era. Worse, for every scholar who is punished, many more self-censor, knowing they could be next. It's no better for the students, a majority of whom say that the campus climate prevents them from saying things they believe.

Cross-posting from "Dr. Seuss" thread.

[artalot]

I assign a lot of complex images and readings (gender, sex, and race) - I very rarely give trigger warnings. The only time I've even done it is when we read something with a racial slur and when we talk about sexual assault. Otherwise, I do think students need to be able to discuss difficult topics. We live in a difficult world. I find that most students want to discuss it - they want to know how to grapple with problematic material.
Perhaps Cornell's student government is different from that at my Uni, but it seems like ours will pass almost anything. Like many politicians, they don't actually consult the student body, they just do what they want. And, again, like many politicians, they don't think very deeply about the ways in which their actions will affect people who don't think like them.

[history_grrrl]

I very rarely give trigger warnings. The only time I've even done it is when we read something with a racial slur and when we talk about sexual assault.

This is me, too. But this past year was a challenge. I had a student approach me who identified as suffering from PTSD and wanted warnings for anything related to sexual violence, sexual harassment, etc. I told her I don't give graphic descriptions in class but these issues would be a very persistent theme throughout the semester due to the course topic. I could not reasonably excuse her from every lecture or discussion where the issue of sexual exploitation arose. In fact she did leave and skip some classes and then, along with a few of her friends, trashed me on evaluations for not giving trigger warnings, being insensitive to victims, etc. Ironically, I let the class know that I wanted to spend a bit of time in our last class session sharing my thoughts about content warnings and hearing what they thought. In retrospect, I wish I had told that student that perhaps this was not the right class for her at this time.

Another student sent my chair a seven-paragraph complaint that, in her discussion group (different class), she was shocked and horrified that one classmate referred to "colored people" when discussing a major race-related issue from a previous century and another - this was even more unforgivable - read the word "n*gro" (her formulation) from a primary document of that era. Her discussion made clear she thinks "Negro" is the same as the n-word. "Colored" is certainly a problem in present-day usage; occasionally we hear it from students who think it's the same as "of color," and I use it in class, along with Negro, when referring to titles of black organizations that included or still include those words. My chair and I spent an hour explaining to this student the history of the terminology, the purpose of university, but it didn't seem to make much difference, since our expertise hardly compared with whatever she learned on the internet during the past three years (her source of info about Negro, when I asked).

I'm glad about the Cornell decision and the Harvard group, and especially pleased that Jeannie Suk Gerson is involved in the Harvard initiative. She had an excellent New Yorker piece on trigger warnings.not long ago, and I'm always relieved when people who aren't right wing demonstrate that they care about freedom of expression and academic freedom and offer thoughtful critiques. I really wish this were not framed as a left v. right issue, as it so often seems to be.

[spork]

^ The students' actions described above are really nothing but attempts to weaponize claims of discomfort.

[marshwiggle]

I'm glad about the Cornell decision and the Harvard group, and especially pleased that Jeannie Suk Gerson is involved in the Harvard initiative. She had an excellent New Yorker piece on trigger warnings.not long ago, and I'm always relieved when people who aren't right wing demonstrate that they care about freedom of expression and academic freedom and offer thoughtful critiques. I really wish this were not framed as a left v. right issue, as it so often seems to be.

When was the last time you heard someone on the right complaining about the utterance of a particular word, rather than the misuse of it? That's pretty much exclusive to the left at this point in history. (Religious people on the right might complain about profanity, but that is about the misuse of language. Objections about obscenity are that certain language is vulgar, not that people will be harmed by merely hearing it used.)

[ciao_yall]

I'm glad about the Cornell decision and the Harvard group, and especially pleased that Jeannie Suk Gerson is involved in the Harvard initiative. She had an excellent New Yorker piece on trigger warnings.not long ago, and I'm always relieved when people who aren't right wing demonstrate that they care about freedom of expression and academic freedom and offer thoughtful critiques. I really wish this were not framed as a left v. right issue, as it so often seems to be.

When was the last time you heard someone on the right complaining about the utterance of a particular word, rather than the misuse of it? That's pretty much exclusive to the left at this point in history. (Religious people on the right might complain about profanity, but that is about the misuse of language. Objections about obscenity are that certain language is vulgar, not that people will be harmed by merely hearing it used.)

You mean when the right is totally chill when people talk about... critical race theory, slavery, gender identity, sexuality, Black lives, police violence....

[marshwiggle]

I'm glad about the Cornell decision and the Harvard group, and especially pleased that Jeannie Suk Gerson is involved in the Harvard initiative. She had an excellent New Yorker piece on trigger warnings.not long ago, and I'm always relieved when people who aren't right wing demonstrate that they care about freedom of expression and academic freedom and offer thoughtful critiques. I really wish this were not framed as a left v. right issue, as it so often seems to be.

When was the last time you heard someone on the right complaining about the utterance of a particular word, rather than the misuse of it? That's pretty much exclusive to the left at this point in history. (Religious people on the right might complain about profanity, but that is about the misuse of language. Objections about obscenity are that certain language is vulgar, not that people will be harmed by merely hearing it used.)

You mean when the right is totally chill when people talk about... critical race theory, slavery, gender identity, sexuality, Black lives, police violence....

I haven't heard anyone claim that hearing someone say "Black Lives Matter" makes them feel like they don't exist, or that they're going to have to leave the room if someone says it or a poster on the wall proclaims it.