“Trigger warnings” have become the latest football in the political playing field of higher education. My own university attracted national attention earlier this fall when an administrator informed all entering undergraduates that the university does “not support so-called ‘trigger warnings.’”
Of course, as many pointed out, academic freedom protects the right to use trigger warnings if professors deem them pedagogically useful. A letter that was meant to affirm freedom in learning and pedagogy, ironically, seemed to deny one part of it.
Much of the dispute about trigger warnings, unfortunately, appears to turn on rather different interpretations of what they are. An earlier article in The Chronicle described trigger warnings as “written or spoken warnings given by professors to alert students that course material might be traumatic for people with particular life experiences.” And when so understood, the case for them can be straightforward.
Consider the easiest case: Sometimes teachers have a legal obligation to give trigger warnings, and ethically it is the right thing to honor that obligation. Those who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, for example, are often at risk of debilitating psychological stress if exposed to stimuli — images, words, sounds — that evoke the original trauma. Survivors of sexual assault and military combat may need to be warned when assigned materials include descriptions of triggering events, such as rape or combat.
