Conversation in the student union coffee shop between a humanities professor (Art) and a dean of student life (Life).
Life: We’re getting more complaints than ever.
Art: About?
Life: Just about everything. It’s hard to keep up: Appropriation, word choice, materials, topics. It seems that whatever you profs say triggers someone who then asks my office for a safe space or the academic dean’s office for disciplinary action against professors or other students.
Art: I heard that Professor Smith in literature was under scrutiny for teaching Shakespeare and Martin in biology was called in for showing anatomy drawings.
Life: Yes. Gone are the days when someone could teach the “classics” like the Iliad, Macbeth, and The Red Badge of Courage. Students find the violence and reality upsetting. By the way, what are you teaching this semester?
Art: Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five and E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India.
Life: Geez. You’re just going to cause me grief. Works on war and colonialism. Well, all I can say is “Expect protests” and a tribunal for your insensitivity. Also, paperwork and probation. The Board seems to favor the triggered over someone who triggers.
Art: So, what are you saying? I should abandon teaching anything that “might” trigger some coddled rich kid?
Life: Practically. Choose something innocuous like The Berenstain Bears, Peter Pan, or Harry Potter.
Art: Have you been sleeping under a rock? All three of those have been triggers. Berenstain’s mother bear for being a stay-at-home mom who cooks, cleans, and does dishes as a slave to husband and family. Peter Pan’s Indians for the portrayal of Native
Americans as unsophisticated and rather stupid savages, and Harry Potter for its portrayal of death. There’s no predicting what will trigger today’s snowflakes who seek safe spaces. No author’s work is free from the whims of the easily triggered. Take the
Bard for example. According to a UK Telegraph article by Tom McArdle,
The University of the West of England (UWE) has issued warnings for “blood” and “psychological trauma” in Macbeth as well as “storms” and “extreme weather” in The Tempest. One theatre show of the shipwreck play was highlighted for containing the “popping of balloons”. [sic.] *
Shakespeare! Dean, Shakespeare! The sacred bard’s plays are “triggers.” And balloons!
Life: Tell me about it. I’ve been in contact with my counterpart in the U. of Nottingham after the school banned the use of Anglo-Saxon in a course title, replacing it with “Viking and Early Medieval English Studies.”
Art: What? As part of my literature studies I had to take Anglo-Saxon to be able to read Beowulf. Sure, it could be called Old English, but that doesn’t erase the history of the people who spoke and wrote it. And what are “early Medieval English studies if not studies in Anglo-Saxon and the history of the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes?
Life: Look, you’re preaching to the choir, here. We’ve had people complain about paintings in the school’s museum and in texts used by the Art Department. Everything is potentially offensive…even White on White, especially after students hear that it is Kazimir Malevich’s 1918 suprematist composition. White on White! That’s even worse than being triggered by MacBeth or pictures of human anatomy.
Art: We’re doomed. It won’t take a nuclear war to annihilate civilization. A few vocal snowflakes will destroy it just as effectively.
*https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/02/07/university-west-england-shakespeare-trigger-warnings/
Life: We’re getting more complaints than ever.
Art: About?
Life: Just about everything. It’s hard to keep up: Appropriation, word choice, materials, topics. It seems that whatever you profs say triggers someone who then asks my office for a safe space or the academic dean’s office for disciplinary action against professors or other students.
Art: I heard that Professor Smith in literature was under scrutiny for teaching Shakespeare and Martin in biology was called in for showing anatomy drawings.
Life: Yes. Gone are the days when someone could teach the “classics” like the Iliad, Macbeth, and The Red Badge of Courage. Students find the violence and reality upsetting. By the way, what are you teaching this semester?
Art: Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five and E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India.
Life: Geez. You’re just going to cause me grief. Works on war and colonialism. Well, all I can say is “Expect protests” and a tribunal for your insensitivity. Also, paperwork and probation. The Board seems to favor the triggered over someone who triggers.
Art: So, what are you saying? I should abandon teaching anything that “might” trigger some coddled rich kid?
Life: Practically. Choose something innocuous like The Berenstain Bears, Peter Pan, or Harry Potter.
Art: Have you been sleeping under a rock? All three of those have been triggers. Berenstain’s mother bear for being a stay-at-home mom who cooks, cleans, and does dishes as a slave to husband and family. Peter Pan’s Indians for the portrayal of Native
Americans as unsophisticated and rather stupid savages, and Harry Potter for its portrayal of death. There’s no predicting what will trigger today’s snowflakes who seek safe spaces. No author’s work is free from the whims of the easily triggered. Take the
Bard for example. According to a UK Telegraph article by Tom McArdle,
The University of the West of England (UWE) has issued warnings for “blood” and “psychological trauma” in Macbeth as well as “storms” and “extreme weather” in The Tempest. One theatre show of the shipwreck play was highlighted for containing the “popping of balloons”. [sic.] *
Shakespeare! Dean, Shakespeare! The sacred bard’s plays are “triggers.” And balloons!
Life: Tell me about it. I’ve been in contact with my counterpart in the U. of Nottingham after the school banned the use of Anglo-Saxon in a course title, replacing it with “Viking and Early Medieval English Studies.”
Art: What? As part of my literature studies I had to take Anglo-Saxon to be able to read Beowulf. Sure, it could be called Old English, but that doesn’t erase the history of the people who spoke and wrote it. And what are “early Medieval English studies if not studies in Anglo-Saxon and the history of the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes?
Life: Look, you’re preaching to the choir, here. We’ve had people complain about paintings in the school’s museum and in texts used by the Art Department. Everything is potentially offensive…even White on White, especially after students hear that it is Kazimir Malevich’s 1918 suprematist composition. White on White! That’s even worse than being triggered by MacBeth or pictures of human anatomy.
Art: We’re doomed. It won’t take a nuclear war to annihilate civilization. A few vocal snowflakes will destroy it just as effectively.
*https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/02/07/university-west-england-shakespeare-trigger-warnings/
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