Conflict Averse

Proponents of trigger warnings—labels inserted in university syllabi to indicate when class readings contain descriptions of war, rape and other traumatic subjects—argue that such warnings help survivors of such events avoid reliving their trauma in flashbacks. Last year, for example, four undergraduates at Columbia University in New York wrote an article noting that Ovid’s Metamorphoses contains graphic descriptions of rape: “Like so many texts in the Western canon, it contains triggering and offensive material that marginalizes student identities in the classroom.” Beyond Columbia, calls for trigger warnings have been made by students at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Oberlin College, the University of Michigan, George Washington University and Rutgers University. Works recommended for warnings range from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (misogynistic violence) to Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (racism, colonialism, religious...