A subcommittee of the
American Association of University Professors has drafted and approved a statement opposing the use of trigger warnings in the classroom. The document supports academic freedom and takes the following position:
The presumption that students need to be protected rather than challenged in a classroom is at once infantilizing and anti-intellectual. It makes comfort a higher priority than intellectual engagement and--as the Oberlin list demonstrates--it singles out politically controversial topics like sex, race, class, capitalism, and colonialism for attention.
Indeed, if such topics are associated with triggers, correctly or not, they are likely to be marginalized if not avoided altogether by faculty who fear complaints for offending or discomforting some of their students. Although all faculty are affected by potential charges of this kind, non-tenured and contingent faculty are particularly at risk. In this way the demand for trigger warnings creates a repressive, “chilly climate” for critical thinking in the classroom.
Read the complete "On Trigger Warnings" (August 2014).
