College campuses, once a hotbed of anything-goes radicalism, are morphing into antiseptic bastions of thought cleansing. The source of this depressing trend is a new breed of students, determined to avoid offense or emotional discomfort at any cost.
Harvard Law School students, according to The New Yorker, have asked their professors not to teach about rape law because the subject is traumatic for them. Northwestern University students filed federal charges, eventually dismissed, against their instructor for writing a professional journal opinion piece opposing prohibitions against faculty-student dating. They said it made them uncomfortable. Students in a number of colleges have been allowed to skip reading assignments that contain passages that might upset them. Here’s how Atlantic Monthly introduced a lengthy analysis of this trend: “Something strange is happening at America’s colleges and universities.”
Indeed it is. The movement’s origins were benign and well intentioned. It started with infrequently used “trigger warnings” on assigned readings, designed as a heads’ up for students who had experienced trauma – sexual assault or other violence. They weren’t excused from the assignment, but the advance warning allowed them to consult with a therapist or take other precautions. In those same early days, human rights training for both faculty and students focused on a concept of “microaggressions”, a form of subconscious racism or sexism typically involving a stereotype. An example would be telling Asian students they must be good at math.
Those noble and sensible beginnings, however, evolved into darker outcomes. As a result of student pressure, backed by threatened social media attacks and the filing of federal discrimination charges, trigger warnings expanded way beyond the traumatized few and are now issued by more than 50% of the faculty, and for such subjects as racism, classism sexism, disregard for personal autonomy, spiders, drug use, suicide, indigenous artifacts, Nazi paraphernalia and slimy things. Worse yet, many schools report that a trigger warning now means students don’t have to read the objectionable material. Fortunately, leaders of some of the country’s leading educational institutions have recently tried to dial this movement back. American University, the University of Chicago and others have adopted policies against trigger warnings. Meanwhile, microaggressions have gone from a human rights learning strategy to a list of things that should never be said. In the University of California system, for example, the faculty has been warned against using a long list phrases, including, “I believe the most qualified person should get the job.”
Sheltering students from unpleasant thoughts and offensive ideas is anathema to what education is all about. How do you teach history without exploring the horrible trauma of war, slavery, Jim Crow laws and the treatment of American Indians? How do you teach literature if you have to trigger out Shakespeare’s “Othello” because of its violence against women, or his “Henry V” because of Henry’s use of warfare and threatened sexual violence as a way of obtaining political success? What about the suicide themes of Sylvia Plath’s poetry or the fear, pain and suffering caused by totalitarianism in Kurt Vonnegut’s novels? If the goal of education is to teach students not what to think, but how to think, you don’t get there by allowing them to remain in their comfort zones.
Trying to shelter students from racist and sexist microaggressions may alleviate momentary angst, but it does nothing to eradicate the broader problem that produced them. When they surface, why not use them as teachable moments so the entire class can learn what stereotyping is and the pain it causes? It is sadly ironic that this push to create a sanitized, safe and protective campus environment is happening at a time when this country is 30-some days and a handful of poll points away from electing as president someone whose campaign has been filled not with microaggressions, but with “YUGE” macroaggressions. Here is a small sampling of the headlines: (TRIGGER WARNING: These news reports are likely to cause anxiety, depression and a sudden interest in Canadian real estate.)
Donald Trump Eats a Taco Bowl to Prove His Love for Hispanics
Trump Campaign CEO Complained of Jews at Daughters’ School
Donald Trump: If Black Lives Don’t Matter, Then Go Back to Africa
Trump Calls for Banning Muslims From Entering U.S.
Trump Wanted to Fire Women Who Weren’t Pretty Enough
That’s the world outside of the campus cocoon. The Donald Trumps out there do not come with a trigger warning. Dealing with them, resisting their vile hate and racism is not optional. That’s why we need college graduates who are ready, willing and able to work against the forces they’d rather not think about. It’s the only way we can move this evil trauma from the headlines to the history books.