Said Alex Morey, the director of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, quoted in "Should College Come With Trigger Warnings? At Cornell, It’s a ‘Hard No.’ When the student assembly voted to require faculty to alert students to upsetting educational materials, administrators pushed back" (NYT).
The student assembly voted unanimously that it "implores all instructors to provide content warnings
on the syllabus for any traumatic content that may be discussed," and the university president Martha E. Pollack, vetoed the resolution, the first use of this veto in more than 20 years.
The students' use of the word" implores" makes it sound like a mere request, but there was also the resolution that "students who choose to opt-out of exposure to triggering content will not be penalized, contingent on their responsibility to make up any missed content."
How do you make up what you missed when you are opting out of exposure to it? Is the teacher supposed to design endless alternative readings? It's unworkable. Anything worth reading is potentially triggering, and students would be empowered to demand credit when they're not doing the work. Who would take advantage of this opportunity? Would the professor dare to question whether any given student was sincerely sensitive? I suspect that the most sensitive students would refrain from asking the professor for favors and that manipulative students would soak up the professor's time. It's a perverse incentive.
The NYT article notes "the stark divide in how different generations define free speech and how much value they place on its absolute protection" — as if free speech were not threatened in the past by those who want the authorities to protect us.
Some professors support the use of trigger warnings. “When used correctly,” said Connor Strobel, a professor of social sciences at the University of Chicago, “trigger warnings can open up a conversation” with students, enabling professors to alert them to available resources.
Professor Strobel recently asked students to read “The Second Sex,” by Simone de Beauvoir, and alerted them that the book included themes of “menstruation and menopause, and things that women are shamed for,” he said.
One student approached him and said that because of a family issue, she was concerned about reading it. He was willing to create an alternate assignment for her...
An alternative to “The Second Sex”! Who would have thought that feminism would come to this? The book draws the "shameful" subjects out of the dark, and the trigger warning is saying maybe they belong in the dark.
... but first encouraged her to start the book and see if she found it more compelling than upsetting. “She found it very salient,” he said, and completed the assignment.
“At a university, there is no topic that should be off the table, but trigger warnings are a preview of coming attractions that treat students with humanity,” he added....
It's the theater of humanity. I suppose a professor would be regarded as cruel if she took the position I would take: Advise students to look up book titles on their own and read plot summaries to learn about whatever it is they need to know about in advance. That would work just as well if the point of the warning is to be warned. But if the point is for the professor to put on a show of caring, it doesn't work at all.
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52 comments:
"Anything worth reading is potentially triggering"
Particularly if being triggered is strictly a subjective power move.
"the stark divide in how different generations define free speech and how much value they place on its absolute protection"
Is it the "generations" that make the difference, or their gender distributions, or the general prog culture war assault?
"Who would have thought that feminism would come to this?"
I would have, and did, considering that real-world feminism rested on the notion that women are special and that on average men and women have very different preferences and priorities. More women want more security and comfort. Of course, the distributions overlap, etc. etc., but the feminization of any sector brings cultural change.
But: good on Cornell to draw a line, for once.
trigger warnings are a preview of coming attractions that treat students with humanity,” he added....
Ugh, postmodernism, in which everything exists only in relation to everything else. "Deny" a student's "humanity" by not anticipating that student's particular area(s) of sensitivity, and somehow your "denial" ribs the student of "humanity."
Look, I know that as a matter of physics we live in a relativistic universe. But as a matter of the human soul (as shorthand for whatever distinguishes humans from other animals), why should we need someone else to affirm our humanity?
This is the logical endpoint (reducto ad absurdum) of helicopter parents and "everyone is a special snowflake." Snowflakes melt when exposed to one single degree above 0, and snowflakes cannot survive through the spring, summer, or fall.
This request is a clear indication that education has shifted from education per se toward a quasi-church environment. "Everyone is a child of God. Everyone is equal before God. Jesus forgives all who confess their sins." But the students don't understand this because there's an absolute lack of self-awareness about church vs. state vs. facts vs. feelings vs. abstract ideals vs. pragmatic reality.
Too much time living in social media and video game fantasies?
Connor Strobel, a professor of social sciences at the University of Chicago,
Surprised the defender of trigger warnings is a man. Not surprised he's in social sciences.
Not surprised the students are knowledgeable in leftist agitation but not in when to use/not use hyphens:
The students' use of the word" implores" makes it sound like a mere request, but there was also the resolution that "students who choose to opt-out of exposure to triggering content will not be penalized, contingent on their responsibility to make up any missed content."
Sad that it's actually newsworthy when adults tell students the rules and not the other way around.
There is some observation that people are conservative when it comes to the things they know most about. AA's reaction is not surprising, and you don't need to be a former law professor to agree.
Now, give these same students a heckler's veto right to act the asshole and disrupt class when discussing those triggering topics . . .
"Traumatic content." Bwahahaha!
GPT-4 is reported to be smarter than a college student but dumber than a human.
Couple thoughts:
1. You know when you're watching a show and it flashes TV-MA or whatever, then lists the reasons (smoking, bad language, violence, sexual content, etc)? Trigger warning.
2. It's just a warning. Ann, if someone goes and reads the summary online and asks to be excused from reading the book, what's the difference?
3. Some of the same people lambasting trigger warnings and our snowflake youth are also fully supportive of some random parent being able to get a book removed from the school library or even the public library! (Maybe not FIRE or Ann, but definitely plenty of the people on this bulletin board.) Trigger warnings just don't seem to me to be the leading edge of the battle for free speech these days. I do get why professors and op-ed columnists would be infatuated by then though.
I had a claque of students who excoriated me for not giving a trigger warning for Joyce Carol Oates’s story “Where Are You Going? Where Have You Been?” I responded that I couldn’t possibly know what would trigger individual students and that I didn’t want to pre-game anyone’s response to a work. Furthermore, literature is full of murder, rape and other unpleasantness, I said, so they should consider themselves warned for the remainder of the semester. One student wouldn’t accept this and was particularly insistent that she must be warned specifically. She emailed me about it four times. I offered to meet with her individually to discuss each work prior to our reading it so that she could be adequately prepared for any “traumatizing” content. Oh no, she said. That would be too much work for her.
"I suspect that the most sensitive students would refrain from asking the professor for favors and that manipulative students would soak up the professor's time. It's a perverse incentive."
This is how it works with every set aside.
I think it should suffice to put a single catch-all warning on the college's entrance application. "Trigger Warning: if you would suffer any harm from exposure to any ideas, do not submit this application." That should satisfy everyone.
One student approached him and said that because of a family issue, she was concerned about reading it.
That's unhelpfully vague. Unless they're gonna kill her for possession of a book, I don't see a problem.
College is a time to break free of parental holds. The professor is enabling the infantilization of his student.
They must have learned from 1969. The president was so insistent that everything was up for negotiation that students took over the administration building, probably thinking that if one seizes the negotiation room it gives one a better place at the table.
O good grief. Kudos to Cornell. Let the marshmallows go home to their participation trophies.
<a href="https://youtu.be/QvrMNDv6iYU”>At least we know what the root cause of the problem is </a>
Seems to me codling would only exacerbate the problem.
Early mistake is the hardest part… as the song goes.
Who would have thought that feminism would come to this?
OOO! OO! CALL ON ME!! OO!
Talk about unworkable....
"Cornell’s New General Counsel Is Oberlin College In-House Lawyer Responsible For Gibson’s Bakery Case"
https://legalinsurrection.com/2021/04/cornells-new-general-counsel-is-oberlin-college-in-house-lawyer-responsible-for-gibsons-bakery-case/
Hmmmm.
Is Simone de Beavoir really such an inspirational figure? Whatever feminist view she expressed in her published works was belied by what went on in her domestic life. Jean Paul Sartre was no stud muffin, but she went out of her way to make him happy. She used to recruit some of her students to become his lover. Hell is other people, especially if they're existential French philosophers....Jefferson has lost street cred because his record of slave ownership doesn't jibe with his espousal of inalienable human rights. Maybe Simone deserves a similar fate. She was more a tool of the patriarchy than Nora in a Doll's House.
Kudos to Cornell President Pollack!
I'm baffled that young adults today--some of them--are so emotionally fragile that they need "trigger warnings" to avoid material that may reduce them to sobbing, shaking, hysteria. Is it because their parents have over-coddled them in everything throughout their lives? Is it a self-conscious performative demonstration of their (self-imagined) "higher" sensitivity and opposition to "oppression" to any person or social group, or of their own exquisite, cultivated pain? Emotional and intellectual growth is like physical growth: it is painful, (to greater or lesser frequency and degree of severity with every person), and through cuts and bruises, wounds and failures--physical, emotional and intellectual--one develops callouses and the tolerance of discomfort necessary to be a functional adult in an indifferent (and often cruel) world.
The epithet "Snowflake" is overwrought and overused, but it comes from a societal phenomenom rooted in the college-aged/college-society: That individuals should not be faced with things they don't want to be faced with - and that they should be able to choose not to face them.
That includes speeches, books, conversations, even the presence of certain individuals based upon their skin color or beliefs.
And here we are...
Having attended Cornell for nine years - and I was the president of an activist group whose cause was unpopular, and it was around 1991 that the opposition started "surround, shout, shut down" the group's speaker events which was infuriating - I am grateful Cornell is taking a principled stand.
Triggering is something happens to trauma victims. I would wager that 99+% of these students aren't trauma victims at all. Either they're overselling their life experiences as "trauma" in an effort to join the victim Olympics, or they're overly concerned about others being triggered just like so many of these morons are offended on behalf of others who probably aren't offended anyway.
This is really about 2 things. First, power is key. These students want to exert power and this is how they're trying to do it. It should be shot down on those grounds alone. The schools need to show students who is in charge. It ain't them.
Secondly, these fuckers are lazy. They don't want to be challenged intellectually because they never have been. These kids grow up in an environment whereby their parents did everything for them and kept life safe for them at all times. They were rarely allowed to fail and when they did, it wasn't their fault. They've never faced any serious adversity or done work they weren't interested in so slightly difficult reading material is now deemed traumatic so as to allow them to avoid the work.
"My mom went through menopause so I can't read an assignment that discusses it." WTF is that crap? Get off your lazy ass and do some fucking work.
We are talking about adults, right? Adults who are 18 years or older. Right?
What on earth could a university/college teach to adults that would require a 'trigger warning'?!
We have seen law school students who did not want to hear anything about rape, but how can they handle such cases once they are lawyers? Literature is full of sex and violence and bad words. No more novels for students. History is one big atrocity after another. Astronomy ignores indigenous ways of knowing. Biology refers to male and female anatomy and behaviors (human and animal). The whole thing is obviously too distressing for cry-bullies.
It is interesting that the same type that wants trigger warnings supports having sexually explicit books in elementary school libraries...
No one old enough to be in college should be traumatized by any course content. If so, they do not belong there. One exception might be the genetics section of intro biology where you learn that men and women are specifically different genotypes.
No one old enough to be in college should be traumatized by any course content. If so, they do not belong there. One exception might be the genetics section of intro biology where you learn that men and women are specifically different genotypes.
Good.
'The student assembly voted unanimously that it "implores all instructors to provide content warnings on the syllabus for any traumatic content that may be discussed,"'
Hey, they're paying the piper, why shouldn't they call the tune? They're ineducable morons anyway. Just show 'em cartoons, and if they don't want to watch them, they can fidget with their smartphones. Smarter than a Cornell student, anyway.
Trigger warning: this lecture may replace a deplorable or profitable fetus for a baby in bloom, existentially from conception, legally from six weeks.
I've mocked the History of Rock and Roll in 500 trigger warnings here before. (Thanks again for bring me to it, Ann)
For those not listening, Andrew Hickey starts off each episode with a warning "This episode contains explicit talk about suicide..." Or rape, or mental illness or other potential triggers. To those who object to the trigger warning, he says "Go fuck yourselves". Not much more politely than that.
However, beyond the 30 seconds or so in the intro, the potential triggers do not seem to affect the podcast and I am grateful for that.
As someone else mentioned, it is like the movie/TV warnings. (Or ads "Nudity? Yeah, I'll check that out!")
In college especially, I guess I could live with trigger warnings, though I would much prefer not to. What I cannot live with is excusing the student from doing the work. If you are taking the class you will read this book, no substitutes. You will show up in class prepared to discuss it, write papers on it take tests on it just like everyone else.
Don't like it, take another class find another school.
John Henry
Some of the same people lambasting trigger warnings and our snowflake youth are also fully supportive of some random parent being able to get a book removed from the school library or even the public library!
WTF? I'd like yo see you prove that premise.
Of course "random parents" have a right to remove pornography from school libraries, but this is the type of comment people like to post suggesting right wingers are book banners. Learn something dude. Go find out who exactly is editing classics or removing books we all read in high school because the woke are offended now. Then show me ANY book banning efforts advocated "on this blog" aimed at public libraries. The only thing I've seen people want to ban from the library is happy hour for trannies who want to groom children. It's a fairly specific complaint, man.
Trigger warnings just don't seem to me to be the leading edge of the battle for free speech these days.
Did you learn nothing from Tipper Gore and the PRMC boondoggle? Trigger warnings are one of the left's ten million ways to signal WrongThink to mind numbed leftists. Slapping a trigger warning on something is them saying "this is icky and we don't approve." Which is stupid and dangerous. Do you want children taught that some ideas are so dangerous they can not even be discussed? Do you see the difference between trigger warnings about "sensitive content" versus the TV warnings about "adult content?" Because understanding the difference between adult concepts and educational study is pretty important to an informed discussion of this topic.
Of course one is most likely to call others Nazis if you are prevented from ever learning what the real Nazis actually believed and did. A lot of Nazi labels being thrown at people "these days" in the "leading edge of the battle for free speech." Hmmmm.
I am guessing that there is something more practical in "trigger warnings."
If material has a trigger warning, students can claim that it should not be on the exams or part of an essay assignment.
I'm of two minds when it comes to these trigger warning controversies. One is that we are raising the softest generation ever, where even a representation of something unpleasant is a reason for warnings and coddling and the other side is that trigger warnings are a deliberate power play to silence and control speech and the flow of ideas. Still not quite sure of which mind I am at.
Switch to majoring in math. End of triggering.
If you take metaphors seriously, doesn't "trigger warning" imply that students are dangerous weapons?
Rick67--Nine years? Wow. Are you any relation to Senator Blutarsky? ;^)
"But if the point is for the professor to put on a show of caring, it doesn't work at all." IMHO it's not even a show of caring, it's just a pro forma CYA move so that when the feral children melt down over a misplaced comma and start to Mau-Mau the administration for an easy A and a new student center, the professor can point to the "trigger warning" ritual and say s/he tried.
If Cornell does stand up to this garbage, it will be a very welcome move and, may we hope, a harbinger of much more, both there and across the land. The faculty IMHO are a big part of the problem: either because they are spineless/defeated/confused or because they're complicit with the snowflakes. Either way, if the administration braces the faculty and stares down the snowflakes, I think rapid and radical change for the better is not impossible.
Well, we can dream, can't we?
This is all old hat..
Back in 1987; i told my Engineering Dynamics professor, that i found the course matter Threatening,
And requested a alternative assignment. He agreed, and we changed my major to one with far less multivariable calculus.
That's what you Do, isn't it? IF you can't handle the course material, you rethink WHY you're in that course?
Modern generation are pussies.
This is why America is in decline and will lose the next major war.
This reminds me of an episode when I was in medical school. The class two years behind me was typical 60s kids. They decided to not take the final exam in the Surgery course because it was not "relevant." The wise old professor allowed this but gave them an "Incomplete" on the class. By June, 6 months later, they realized that an incomplete wound up a "D" grade if not completed. They decided to take the exam after all. Of course, they had had 6 months to forget the material and one of them failed. He came to the professor and told him that he had failed because they asked the wrong questions on the exam. "I know so much more about Surgery than was on that exam !" he said. The professor, who had a keen sense of humor said, "OK, mentally I'll give you a "C". I'll just put the "F" on the paper." The kid was horrified and said, "It's what's on the paper that counts !"
Of course, that professor was known to tell stories.
4/12/23, 9:49 AM
That's what may happen if you try to hyperlink on your phone screen.
Everybody knows a phone is for making potential viral videos.
"The student assembly" are spoiled children.
If the school eventually caves I'd include this in my syllabus:
We will cover a wide variety of topics in this course. We will engage in a free, polite give and take during class discussions. Because it is impossible to know what may or may not offend or frightened one or more of your classmates, be aware EVERY FRICKIN' DAY may trigger you.
What about trigger warnings like this? And what alternative readings might get around this risk?
=====
One
Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics
1.1 Introduction: Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics of the Perfect Gas
Ludwig Boltzmann, who spent much of his life studying statistical mechanics, died in 1906, by his own hand. Paul Ehrenfest, carrying on the work, died similarly in 1933. Now it is our turn to study statistical mechanics.
Perhaps it will be wise to approach the subject cautiously. We will begin by considering the simplest meaningful example, the perfect gas, in order to get the central concepts sorted out.
======
And intro to quantum mechanics, such as it was 40 years ago for the undergraduate made my brain hurt. No one warned me, or cared.
Robert Cook said...
Several things. Thanks Cook, you said it well.
Why do you go to a university except to be exposed to the whole wide world of human thought? The human experience is beautiful, ugly, brave, crass, violent, exhilarating. Don't go through life seeking comfort.
This is another rhetorical inflation problem. Originally, trigger warnings were supposed to be for the purpose of helping out students who have suffered a trauma and would like to avoid "triggering" PTSD or panic. But over the years what was meant to be "please give a heads up if the book has a graphic depiction of rape or child abuse so I can prepare myself" evolved to the idea that everything can be "triggering" to someone. Theoretically, a depiction of murder would NOT be "triggering" because none of the students in the class would have experience trauma from being murdered. But vicarious and "adjacent" triggering has been invented, and so Huckleberry Finn can be triggering for racism and the Scarlet Letter for "slut shaming," which makes the whole thing an impossible trap.
I do tend to try to give students a heads up for books that include rape or child abuse, and I always invite students who might be triggered to come talk to me in my office hours so that I can explain, for example, what happens in The Reeve's Tale in abstract terms. Really what I see students as wanting is just basic good will. I explain that I don't want to cause anyone pain, but that the students won't be getting the full value of the class if I remove texts for those reasons.
So far, so good, with two minor exceptions. In my SciFi class, George R.R. Martin's "Sandkings" "traumatized" a number of students who said they had nightmares after reading it (the story is legit terrifying and gives me the creepy-crawlies, so I now recommend not reading it before bed). There's also a 1950s SciFi story whose name I can't remember which is told seemingly from the point of view of a "child" who locked up in a basement by seeming evil parents who refuse to let the child come out to play, but it turns out that the "child" is some kind of octopoid, radiation-created mutant that eats cats and will soon eat people. A student warned me that the story could be triggering for child abuse victims, and although I hadn't thought about that--because the gimmick of the story is that the narrator is a monster--she might have been right.
Prediction: Cornell will fold after the woke mob gets done shutting the place down.
"WTF? I'd like yo see you prove that premise."
I don't need to since you did it for me:
"Of course "random parents" have a right to remove pornography from school libraries"
"This is why America is in decline and will lose the next major war."
1. We haven't been so successful in the "not" major wars.
2. If there is a "next major war," the entire world may lose.
3. The best thing we could do for our country and for the world is to drastically cut back our military funding, close down our military bases around the world, stop being so belligerent, reinstate actual diplomacy (performed by diplomats) as our primary means of interaction with other nations, and spend the money saved from the above cutbacks on domestic needs and services.
Readering apparently unaware his fellow travelers have already lost their shit over the horrifyingly racist concept that 2+2=4 and that mathematics needs to shed its alleged whiteness. Sad how uninformed he is!
Thank you, William: the more I read Simone De Beauvoir, the more she repulsed me.
She pimped very young women for Sartre, while enduring his eternal abuse of her. Some role model.
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