“We are beginning to see a new era of correctness, in which the protection of a small group of students who might be harmed in an unpredictable fashion overrides the academic freedoms of university professors.”

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(Cinders McLeod for The Globe and Mail)

Geof  Smith, The Globe and Mails

Have you heard of “trigger warnings?” I’m worried that you will, and soon. The Los Angeles Times denounced them in an editorial this week; The New Republic, a left-leaning magazine, did the same in a piece at the beginning of March. Trigger warnings are coming.

(…) the phrase denotes a growing tendency among North American university student groups to demand that professors provide advance warning about course material – books, films, discussion topics – that might provoke anxiety, panic attacks, or post-traumatic stress disorder in students who have been victims of abuse or assault, or who believe they are the victims of systemic discrimination. A few universities have even begun asking professors to remove said material from their courses.

We are beginning to see a new era of correctness, in which the protection of a small group of students who might be harmed in an unpredictable fashion overrides the academic freedoms of university professors.

Ohio’s Oberlin College now has a policy asking faculty members to “be aware of racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, cissexism, ableism and other issues of privilege and oppression,” and to make so-called triggering material optional if it does not contribute directly to learning goals, or even to excise it. As The New Republic pointed out, Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe’s brilliant novel about the great harms of colonialism, Things Fall Apart, now carries the warning that it “may trigger readers who have experienced racism, colonialism, and religious persecution, violence, suicide, and more.