In a 2015 letter to their student newspaper, four undergraduates at Columbia University called on the administration to officially encourage instructors to issue warnings to potential students of any “triggering and offensive material” in their courses. The letter writers referred to the case of a female student in a general literature class, a victim of sexual assault, who had experienced extreme distress and felt unsafe after having read depictions of rape in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, an assigned text. Such trigger warnings, the students implied, should be issued not only for works in which sexual abuse and assault is depicted but also for material that “marginalizes student identities in the classroom” and exhibits “histories and narratives of exclusion and oppression,” which can be “difficult to read and discuss” for persons of color and students from low-income backgrounds.
The term trigger warning originated in the late 1990s on feminist Internet message boards, where it referred to site-sponsored cautions to readers regarding the presence of graphic depictions of rape in certain posts. Reading such material, it was argued, could trigger panic attacks and other symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in victims of sexual violence. Soon the term and the practice were applied to other discussions in the interest of protecting the sufferers and victims of a wide range of disorders, conditions, and traumas, including eating disorders, self-mutilation, suicidal tendencies, and domestic abuse. By the early 2010s the trigger-warning movement had appeared on college and university campuses and had expanded in scope to encompass victims of injustice, discrimination, and oppression, who could be painfully reminded of their experiences by course material that dealt too explicitly with injustice, discrimination, and oppression. The movement generally called for (voluntary or mandatory) trigger warnings in course syllabi for material that might provoke a strong negative emotional reaction in some students or for the outright removal of such material from the curriculum.
In an official document issued in 2013 (later withdrawn), Oberlin College advised its faculty to “be aware of racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, cissexism [transphobia], ableism, and other issues of privilege and oppression”; to “remove triggering material when it does not contribute directly to the course learning goals”; and to issue warnings of the existence of triggering material in texts that are “too important to avoid.” For example, although Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart “is a triumph of literature that everyone in the world should read,” it “may trigger readers who have experienced racism, colonialism, religious persecution, violence, suicide, and more.” The document further recommended that instructors “strongly consider developing a policy to make triggering material optional.”
On other campuses, trigger warnings have been proposed for specific works, including (in addition to Metamorphoses) F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (suicide and domestic violence), Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway (suicide), and Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice (anti-Semitism). At Harvard Law School, some students have suggested that rape law should not be taught, because its content would inevitably distress some students.
According to a 2015 survey by the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC), only a tiny minority of colleges and universities (1 percent) now require trigger warnings. But students at a significant percentage of institutions had either requested them (15 percent) or complained about their absence (12 percent). The implications for academic freedom, freedom of speech, the value of a university education, and the future of the university itself are of concern to school officials. As the NCAC report noted, 45 percent of instructors think that trigger warnings have had or will have a negative effect on classroom dynamics, including by chilling discussion of topics perceived as sensitive, and 62 percent think they have or will have a negative effect on academic freedom.
Critics of trigger warnings have asserted that they are infantilizing, treating students like children who cannot be exposed to a disagreeable idea (or even to criticism of a disagreeable idea) without becoming upset; that they are crudely anti-intellectual and even antieducational, since in their broadest application they invite students to dismiss virtually all of world history, literature, and culture; that they poorly prepare students for constructively dealing with conflict and disagreement in the real world; that they threaten the academic freedom of instructors to teach courses in their areas of expertise as they see fit; and that they undermine freedom of speech and freedom of inquiry by preemptively closing off discussion of potentially offensive ideas. Another objection to trigger warnings is that they are a poor substitute for the professional treatment and support needed by student victims of sexual assault and other mental or physical trauma and that they risk shifting attention and resources away from the problem of sexual violence on college and university campuses by focusing on reading lists and class discussions.
Recently, some colleges and universities have bucked this trend. In June 2016, the University of Chicago stated in a letter to all incoming freshmen that it does not support trigger warnings and does not condone “safe spaces,” or places on campus in which like-minded students may gather to avoid exposure to words or ideas that upset them. The announced policy—which notably did not prohibit individual professors from issuing trigger warnings or organizing safe spaces—reflected the conclusions of the university’s faculty-constituted Committee on Freedom of Expression, which stated in its 2015 report that “concerns about civility and mutual respect can never be used as a justification for closing off discussion of ideas, however offensive or disagreeable those ideas may be to some members of our community.” Clearly influenced by the report, several other universities, including Princeton and Columbia, soon adopted policies similar to that of Chicago. Even on those campuses, however, the debate regarding trigger warnings was unresolved, and the national controversy showed no signs of abating anytime soon.