Free Speech and Creepy Liberalism

So. You're discussing online pornography somewhere - perhaps irl, but more likely online. You mention a concern about coercion - effect of pornography on the brain - etc. Someone disagrees with you; they wave away your concern, and roll out an eloquent, slightly hackneyed panegyric to Freedom of Expression. Censorship would be worse, they say, although you hadn't suggested censorship.

Scenario two. You're discussing the middle east, and perhaps sharia law. Someone comes along with a praise of 'life's wholesome, natural pleasures', 'wine, women'; they become misty-eyed as they say how sad it is that some people, blinded by fanaticism, would seek to restrict these things. Their descriptions of worldly pleasures seem - slightly stiff? Slightly rote?

Scenario three. Subject is racial abuse. The by now familiar figure I've been portraying rolls up to tell you that 'However unfortunate it may be that some people feel offended by another individual's choice of words', censorship would still be worse, stifling the natural flow of free conversations. Again, you hadn't suggested censorship.

Does this type of person actually exist? I am describing three different people, who I have actually encountered over the last five years or so; but I mean, have I encountered a style, or set of ideas, that is bigger than these three people? If it does exist, is it fair to call it 'Creepy Liberalism'? Is there already a name for it?

I am unsure whether this thread is worth doing, because it being of interest to anyone apart from me depends on the type of person I'm thinking of actually existing. But still.

http://terryweaver.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/choir.jpg

seems like the common thread for this fellow is a conflation of legal permissiveness (along the axis of "freed of expression" vs "censorship") and moral/ethical endorsement of that thing? as in, they dont seem to understand that you can offer full throated opposition to something without at the same time calling for governmental/legal recourse in order to rectify it.

i'm w/ u man. fuck free speech. xxp

But yes, those people/person do exist. Why call it "creepy liberalism"? I haven't encountered any true liberals that have been this way, it has usually always been conservatives/libertarians or just plain ignorants.

Yes, there's a definite misunderstanding of what 'freedom of speech'/First Amendment refers to in the general public, and I even last week had to explain to someone how Kickstarter pulling a fundraiser for its content was not a violation of said amendment, but at this point I think the only way to solve that problem is to follow the example of the ending of Return of the Living Dead

really the best way to reply to these clowns is just to quote the First Amendment, given how short it is.

I think a better description of this attitude is "ignorant and/or uneducated"... obv. tho I don't think its cool to curtail free speech just because its not the government doing it. "Free Speech" has larger connotations than merely the purview of the first amendment.

viceroy otm

but free speech isn't being curtailed if the government isn't preventing it. There's a reason why I can't just walk into my business and shout "EY, SUCK MY OLIVE-OIL SCENTED DICK K THX" and expect to still have my job the next day.

like if your business removes your posts from the company e-bulletin board, it's lame, but while it's corporate censorship, really isn't a violation of free speech.

most of these sound like early-20s white libertarian-leaning dude opinions

N.B.

Am aware that my OP there may look as if I'm trying to ridicule people I've disagreed with/make out that people who happened to disagree with me on said issues = weirdo.

I'm not - I do think the idea of free speech is a very important one.

Also: this was in a UK context, which may or may not be important.

Ryan:

seems like the common thread for this fellow is a conflation of legal permissiveness (along the axis of "freed of expression" vs "censorship") and moral/ethical endorsement of that thing? as in, they dont seem to understand that you can offer full throated opposition to something without at the same time calling for governmental/legal recourse in order to rectify it.

Yeah, that conflation of the legal and the ethical is definitely part of this style. I've wondered if there's a persecution complex at work here - person always seeing state oppression everywhere, but not in a clear-sighted way. That hunted, haunted psyche might be where the 'creepy' is coming from.

It may also be, as neanderthal says

I haven't encountered any true liberals that have been this way, it has usually always been conservatives/libertarians or just plain ignorants.

i.e. the hijacking of 'free speech' as an idea by people who are not really in full sympathy with it, or only want to instrumentalise it. Disjunction between the demeanour and the actual politics thus being the source of creepy.

you're harping on the lib vs conservative angle but Caring Way Too Much About False Instances of Censorship is a pleasure enjoyed equally by assholes of both orientations

Am aware that my OP there may look as if I'm trying to ridicule people I've disagreed with/make out that people who happened to disagree with me on said issues = weirdo.

Wellll, maybe just a little

I feel that this group maybe intersects with the people who call anyone who criticizes any particular group "racist". Like, recently there was incident here in Finland where a local conservative politician posted some blatantly racist, eugenics-influenced comments on his Facebook profile, which unsurprisingly lead to people calling him a Nazi... And then a totally clueless celebrity radio host decided to chide in, saying that it was wrong to criticize the politician, because that's "racist against the Nazis", and he should be free to post whatever he wants.

But yeah, I think these kind of people generally fall into two groups, neither of which I'd call "liberal" in the political sense of the word:

1) Libertarians, who think that having political/civil rights equals being free to say whatever you want about any person or group with no consequences.

2) Conservatives, who twist liberal concepts to benefit their own goals. Racism debates such as the above, where anti-racism is condemned as a "form of racism too", are a particularly good example of this.

i suspect that an unquestioning defence of free speech without recognizing the complexities of edge cases is something that can only come from a position of privilege, ultimately

hang on i think i mean that "free speech" only really exists as a legal concept and that's okay and an important concept but it has never really been a trump card in any legal system, it feels simple-minded to adhere to it as such

Scenario two. You're discussing the middle east, and perhaps sharia law. Someone comes along with a praise of 'life's wholesome, natural pleasures', 'wine, women'; they become misty-eyed as they say how sad it is that some people, blinded by fanaticism, would seek to restrict these things. Their descriptions of worldly pleasures seem - slightly stiff? Slightly rote?

Certainly though cardamom, even if you don't care about the consumption of alcohol or equal rights for women, you surely must be appalled by sharia's strictures against music, right?

I mean, this board is called I Love Music.

fp

This board is called "I Love Everything", though. So I assume we love the pleasures of flesh just as much as music.

Surely the free speech argument works in both directions here? If you have a problem with p0rn or sharia you're covered by the 1st amendment just as much as the other guy, no? I'm not saying you should have to have a debate about free speech in order to raise your concerns, but it might be a way to shut down arguments with idiots.

Rly we need the details and positions held during these arguments if this thread is to be any more than 'i talked to a bad man and another bad man' response 'oh no u talked to a bad man oh no'

most of these sound like early-20s white libertarian-leaning dude opinions

Mostly this, although I've also heard some of them from ppl who were not young or white or dudes.

most of these sound like early-20s white libertarian-leaning dude opinions

― mh, Monday, July 1, 2013 10:34 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yah, not sure what exactly is novel about "creepy liberals"

xp

@ darraghmac - I know, and my inability to supply more details kind of undercuts my question. I mean I can't even be sure I'm not remembering a strawman.

@ how's life - I wasn't in favour of sharia law at the time. It was more that of all the ways one might criticise it, this person's seemed to have something a bit odd about it.

but now you are in favor of sharia law, right?

Yeah, I knew what you were saying. I was just fucking around. xp

xp Well, the mu'atizil school of ethics is interesting, but I can only access their ideas in translation

Screw my spelling today. It's Mu'tazilah.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu%27tazila

gbx otm. liberals are often creepy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThrZ9-sS6aM

Conservatives, who twist liberal concepts to benefit their own goals.

this sort of bad faith argument is so common on the right i wish it had a name. the general strategy is almost a reductio ad absurdum in which, say, some concept of fairness that leads the left to things like affirmative action is then the same idea that leads conservatives to decry affirmative action as "discriminatory." ("Blacks are the real racists because they talk about race so much," is another favorite one.)

the irony to all this is that it's an absolutely self-defeating gesture because while it's intended to push back against some imagined liberal hegemony, it's instead parasitic on it--there's really no such thing as contemporary conservatism beyond this automatic adolescent rebellion against the left and liberalism. you could almost say it takes place within the assumptions of liberalism in that notions of "social justice" and fairness are equally central but "twisted" into a parody version of themselves. i guess this is what happens when conservatism is unmoored from anything like tradition and replaces it with radical individualism/autonomy (ie, freedom from society).

there's really no such thing as contemporary conservatism beyond this automatic adolescent rebellion against the left and liberalism

This is v. interesting

it's an overstatement, but i think it applies at least in part to the "media" version of conservatism (talk radio, NRO, etc...)

this is what i'd describe as football fan politics, more akin to cheering for a nebulous team, right or wrong, and it definitely has a leftist equivalent

Definitely. The bad faith characterisation aspect too.

just came across an interesting passage from Aldous Huxley who defines being a partisan as "egotism at one remove"--a mechanism which allows you to indulge in just about any vice and call it virtue.

there's also a strong element of the coopting of weighted language -- there are phrases that are commonly used, such as "gun control," which are relatively useless when used as intended because they bring up the baggage attached by groups against the concept

or, god help us, what people think "feminism" means

when the right invokes 'free speech' or 'racism' to undermine a common leftist position/belief, is that analogous in any way to the left evoking 'security' as a reason why eg the united states shouldn't use drone strikes. (bc they're undermining their own security by radicalizing more terrorists.) in both cases these aren't ideals that are generally associated w/ the political side and you suspect that maybe they're only being brought up as ideological concern trolling.

i think it's fair game to address an opposition position and try to show that it fails on its own terms as long as you're honest in what you're doing

Mordy, doesn't it depend on whether the ideal is inherent in the original critique or just bolted on?

Why call it "creepy liberalism"? I haven't encountered any true liberals that have been this way, it has usually always been conservatives/libertarians or just plain ignorants.

― Neanderthal, Tuesday, July 2, 2013 5:11 AM (17 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Really? I see liberals (you know people who read the Guardian or the NYT) making comments like the ones mentioned in the OP very often, especially the third type. like if you followed the recent discussions around the EDL in the UK you'd see self identified "lefties" (ugh @ that term, but I use it specifically to differentiate from leftists) saying "well yeah the EDL are bigots but hey - free speech" or condemning antifash groups for confronting fascists instead of "engaging in reasoned debate" or some bullshit (also see the Tea Defence League thing or a typical Guardian CiF thread). Usually the people invoking free speech in this context aren't the ones who are affected by the bigotry in question, makes it easy.

how do lefties vs leftists pls

i mean i suppose people on all sides do it, I did when I was 19, but just didn't get why he picked that side in his description

i assume "leftie" = kneejerk football fan leftists and "leftist" = anybody who holds left-leaning political views

lol fuckin splitters

nah cos the former is a subsection of the latter? i mean, i am avowedly a leftist but i try hard not to be a leftie on the whole

but you are v much distancing yrself from them

i don't think it's a "them" so much as an attitude to be deplored, i would argue that you do plenty of sniping at that same kind of attitude on ilx

sorry, i meant to say it's not a group of people, it's a behaviour that any leftist can slip into. i'd argue the same for the right except everybody knows there are no thoughtful, nuanced right wing shitheads

not sure im not just one of em tbrrr

haha xp, xp!

Sorry, meant to write "lefty" in the 1st instance, I suck at spelling/thinking. But wrt to the difference, I think the word "lefty" itself as an infantilised, cutesy form of "leftist" or "left-wing" also reflects the infantilised, shitty politics unconcerned with nuance and removed from actual left-wing thought of the people who self-identify with it.

For context as to where I'm coming from with this criticism, I'm sort of a #combatliberalism type of person.

There's also a sense online that some people who are mainly interested in free speech - may have a reasoned, valuable commitment to it - sometimes 'swoop' into discussions merely to assert that free speech is more important than anything else and then swoop out again.

To me free speech as a concept is basically a legal one. It mainly bears on whether a person can be treated as a criminal for saying something. I am not quite an absolutist on this question, but very close. I would say that the state must have overwhelming interests at stake to justify criminalizing speech. Civil liability is a different question and I'm willing to treat it by looser, but still restrictive, standards.

But just because some kinds of expression ought not be criminalized, it doesn't mean they are socially acceptable in any way. I'm fine and dandy with calling people out for anything they say that's harmful or offensive, even organizing boycotts or protests over offensive speech. It is when the law gets into it that I grow exceedingly cautious.

Add to that that I think a lot of the early promoters of free speech were literally talking about printing presses, pamphlets and public speaking. Now we have the telephone, the television, cinema, the internet, all of which alter communication massively each in their own way and together. Dunno if that should make a difference or be registered by free speech arguments. Maybe, maybe not, but it seems like something that gets missed a lot.

The internet analogizes pretty well to printing presses and publication, with the owner of the server as the publisher. I can upload my posts to ilx or my photos to flickr, just as I can write a letter to the editor and use the newspaper to disseminate my letter, but that use is conditional on the editors of the newspaper wanting to publish it. Similarly, paid space on a server is subject to the conditions of sale, as imposed by the owner and accepted by the buyer, as with ads in a newspaper.

ppl who don't think liberals do this apparently haven't met every white ex-hippy/deadhead/pink floyd megafan boomer dude i've met
this:

There's also a sense online that some people who are mainly interested in free speech - may have a reasoned, valuable commitment to it - sometimes 'swoop' into discussions merely to assert that free speech is more important than anything else and then swoop out again.

they do it, I just didn't originally get why he only zeroed in on liberals.

I once saw a Wikipedia argument on someone's talk page where he had content removed as it was original research (which he didn't deny), and he replied saying that he would file a lawsuit if it wasn't reinstated, as Wikipedia had violated his free speech, and he had won a similar case like this before.

can't find it anymore but wish I could, it was really funny.

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/116842/trigger-warnings-have-spread-blogs-college-classes-thats-bad

What began as a way of moderating Internet forums for the vulnerable and mentally ill now threatens to define public discussion both online and off. The trigger warning signals not only the growing precautionary approach to words and ideas in the university, but a wider cultural hypersensitivity to harm and a paranoia about giving offense. And yet, for all the debate about the warnings on campuses and on the Internet, few are grappling with the ramifications for society as a whole.

hard not to read this article as a combo WE AINT HURTIN NO ONE CMON and SHUTINS STAY HOME, but the framing does kind of suggest that the spread of trigger warnings mistakenly accepts the liberal scheme for the public management of wrongs/risks: class it as a harm, institute safeguards.

i don't know much about liberal theory. are there recognized classes of things that are proscribed because they might do harm, but it can't be known in advance whether they would in fact do so (thus the logic of a trigger warning, to issue a precaution to permit those who expect harm to exclude themselves)? (if pertaining to speech, would that just traditionally fall under 'decorum' and 'decency'?)

Weird thing to worry about in an age when there are fewer barriers to people viewing all different kinds of content than ever before. Everything is accessible at every moment; things like trigger warnings are just there to help people navigate life without having negative emotional responses forced on them. It has nothing to do with "free speech."

The trigger-warning-requiring "trauma" strikes me as a little bit like the gluten allergy -- a very real but not extremely common phenomenon that gets co-opted by attention seekers.

treezy the reason i put this in this thread (besides tnr lol) is that the framework seems to be the liberal framework, in which speech is traditionally one of the acts least thought to fall within the scope of the harm principle. since the rationale for trigger-warning seems to involve avoiding the inadvertent causing of harms (or maybe that's not the right description, which would matter?), it seems like it's worth asking what a more widespread use of trigger warnings implies about our conceptions/perceptions of ourselves and our speech. say, as harmful to ourselves, beyond our ability to control or to bear it, because of what has been done to us or what has happened to us. and of speech, the words of others, as a danger to our mundane capacity to play a part in the sphere of speech, to relate to others in public.

like, the more is classed under traumas of that sort, the conception becomes an appeal to liberalism's hatred of cruelty, because the triggerable person would be regarded as bearing persistently or permanently tender wounds which any sensitive responsible person would forbear to touch. but i'm not sure a practice of free and open discussion is compatible with that degree of wariness about speech as potentially cruel.

counterpoint

“People brutalise everything. They get up noisily, go about noisily all day, and go to bed noisily. And they constantly talk far too noisily. They are so taken up with themselves that they don’t notice the distress they constantly cause to others, to those who are sick. Everything they do, everything they say causes distress to people like us. And in this way they force anyone who is sick more and more into the background until he’s no longer noticed. And the sick person withdraws into his background. But every life, every existence, belongs to one person and one person only, and no one else has the right to force this life and this existence to one side, to force it out of the way, to force it out of existence. We’ll go by ourselves, as we have the right to do. That’s part of the natural course.”
— Thomas Bernhard — from Concrete

as harmful to ourselves, beyond our ability to control or to bear it,

I may not be following all the parts of your argument, but my response to this bit is, why does it have to be "unbearable" to be unacceptable? Can't people determine for themselves what level of pain or discomfort or aggravation they're prepared to accept at that moment? Trigger warnings are just to let those people know that they may, for their own mental and/or emotional health, want to exercise their right to that limit.

xp I think that last post gets at my point more.

you realize a trigger warning doesn't actually prevent anything from being said.

the more widespread use of trigger warnings implies that more people know what triggers and trigger warnings are and want to create welcoming environments for people who need them. it allows people to mentally prepare themselves if they need to, or bail altogether if they need to. i don't even have 'triggers' and i appreciate them for my own sake. if i were in a hypothetical class right now and i saw a PPT with the header "Trigger Warning: Suicide" i would bail. i'm not sure how any discussion benefits from me freaking out in the middle of a classroom. 15 million american adults share my disorder.

xp

Imo to reject the idea of triggers and trigger warnings as unnecessary or RUN AMOK or w/e is basically to say, "Regardless of who you or I am or what our relationship is, I claim the right to add to your pain today. Fuck you. Deal with it. Not my problem." And then you expect friendship or scholarship or obedience or agreement or anything from that person afterward?

i know it doesn't prevent the things from being said, but it effects a greater regimentation of speech that seems to parallel the contractualization of all human relations under late liberalism, which seems like maybe not the soundest tactic xp

I'm just not seeing a problem with that.

Maybe I don't know what "late liberalism" means? But I think framing it as an issue of "contractualization" and moreover of that being a BAD thing is loading the dice.

cool with putting the well-being of people with disabilities over the greater regimentation of speech that seems to parallel the contractualization of all human relations under late liberalism

well, i think the picture of self-culture in a liberal like mill is predicated on a certain degree of personal risk-taking in the pursuit of growth, and on a certain health of spirit (the kind he suffered a lack of during his depressive episode)

if you take bernhard's metaphor w/o worrying too much about the fit, and say ok, society is now such that so many more of us are just sick (in some sense, wounded, whatever), and no one has the right to force us to suffer any more than we already do, where in anticipation of the sort of harms under consideration here, we require ourselves to engage in this kind of more extensive regimentation of our public interaction, it seems like something that is not going to improve our health any—at best, maybe maintain our sickly condition without it worsening.

something very nietzsche's last man about that picture. xp

Dude. If one of my loved ones died alone and was eaten by their cats and now I'm traumatized when anyone talks about feeding their cats, that is not something one could reasonably predict might have that effect. But when we're referring to rape, assault, grief, disability, trauma, a whole lot of things that we all agree have a lasting harmful effect on people's well being, to protest having to observe some sensitivity about that is really, really lame. And defensive. Aaaaaaand...do those people not have anything worse than that in their lives to be offended about? Like, if having to limit your speech so as NOT TO HURT PEOPLE is the most you've ever been infringed on, you might want to get to, I dunno, go outside once in a while.

Also you might want to reconsider the fedora as a personal style choice.

well, i think the picture of self-culture in a liberal like mill is predicated on a certain degree of personal risk-taking in the pursuit of growth, and on a certain health of spirit (the kind he suffered a lack of during his depressive episode)

if you take bernhard's metaphor w/o worrying too much about the fit, and say ok, society is now such that so many more of us are just sick (in some sense, wounded, whatever), and no one has the right to force us to suffer any more than we already do, where in anticipation of the sort of harms under consideration here, we require ourselves to engage in this kind of more extensive regimentation of our public interaction, it seems like something that is not going to improve our health any—at best, maybe maintain our sickly condition without it worsening.

something very nietzsche's last man about that picture. xp

― j., Monday, March 10, 2014 12:30 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

how loudly do you allow yourself to fart in public

ok, this thread has taken a turn toward the ad hominem. let's clear out for the night and get some sleep. this thread will still be here in the morning.

it was a serious question

i want to

1. understand the liberal point of view from which there might be reasonable resistance to the increasingly broad practice of issuing trigger warnings outside of special, self-chosen contexts

2. ask whether fully taking over the liberal way of managing this issue (viz. add more safeguards, more opt-outs) is the best way of achieving the underlying goals. i am not sure, but i gather that many people to whom trigger warnings seem beneficial are also interested in changes to society that would make trigger warnings unnecessary. but adding another procedure to our interactions may be a more attractive way to 'solve' the problems without changing anything that causes them.

that's all. if you can't talk about that without getting abusive then i think you should ask yourself whether you are capable of having discussions about things at all.

it was literally a serious question i'm not kidding

what kinds of spaces need trigger warnings? presumably we don't need to slap one on the front page of the NYT bc you can reasonable expect that a newspaper will cover sometimes traumatic events and will only take care to give a trigger warning for particularly graphic images (like when they showed the death photos of saddam's sons). similarly other public spaces like tv/movies + radio already take precautions to only show certain content at certain times, to rate themselves, and even censor certain kinds of profanity (or even depravity - like jeffrey dahmer getting bleeped in 'Dark Horse'). so really we're just talking about internet spaces, and particularly places like blogs that might cover a range of content and only occasionally something trauma-related. if that's really the entire context of the 'trigger warning' convention it's really a very small bunch of ppl working out group ethics and not really anything srsly compromising free speech ethics imho.

mordy, the spaces contemplated in that article include classrooms, syllabi, etc.

Oberlin College has published an official document on triggers, advising faculty members to "be aware of racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, cissexism, ableism, and other issues of privilege and oppression," to remove triggering material when it doesn't "directly" contribute to learning goals and "strongly consider" developing a policy to make "triggering material" optional. Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, it states, is a novel that may "trigger readers who have experienced racism, colonialism, religious persecution, violence, suicide and more." Warnings have been proposed even for books long considered suitable material for high-schoolers: Last month, a Rutgers University sophomore suggested that an alert for F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby say, "TW: suicide, domestic abuse and graphic violence."

Well yeah, this seems pretty silly. I had a chat w/ a lit. teacher at one of the local Orthodox Jewish orthodox in Philly about the kinds of books he was allowed to assign and any insinuation of sex, violence, etc was problematic + really restricted his ability to compose a syllabus. It's hard to imagine you could have a functional Lit department w/out teaching this kind of literature. Violence + trauma themselves are major motifs of contemporary humanities.

that's all. if you can't talk about that without getting abusive then i think you should ask yourself whether you are capable of having discussions about things at all.

― j., Monday, March 10, 2014 12:55 AM (22 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

and ok this wasn't like my point with the fart thing but do you not see maybe a teensy shred of irony here

how loudly do you allow yourself to fart in public

I do not ever purposely lend impetus to my farts when I am in a public place. I do not go to great lengths to suppress them, either. I let nature take its course with minimal interference, but under the right circumstances I will make a bit of effort to mitigate them.

This is a different situation from publically venting an opinion which may greatly offend and requires only a trivial act of will to suppress. Farts are not willed into being and even the most poisonous farts should generally be forgiven as being beyond human control.

There absolutely should be a debate about the use of trigger warnings in a college setting, especially re: literature. I can see a strong case for warning students about books which contain graphic scenes of rape or child abuse but it's unhealthy to not discuss where lines should be drawn.

To take Oberlin's TWs on Things Fall Apart as one example, it's meant to be an upsetting book. Any anti-racist novel you can think of might trigger a reader who has experienced racism but that's the point. I worry that to trail it with a long list of warnings will have the effect of putting some readers off.

I'll tell you, one book that coulda done with a trigger warning is Jude the Obscure; because sweet merciful christ, I did not see that shit coming at ALL

When Trigger Warnings become spoilers

Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, it states, is a novel that may "trigger readers who have experienced racism, colonialism, religious persecution, violence, suicide and more."

But surely anyone teaching Achebe would say in advance what it addresses rather than assigning it blind? I don't know, maybe these lists are useful for some teachers.

Trigger warnings are kind of the privileged person's substitute for thinking ahead of time that treating a difficult subject like...a hypothetical, like an abstraction, may be harmful to someone for whom it's not hypothetical. If people resist being encouraged to show this consideration, if they react badly and defensively when you bring it up, if they reduce a student's grade (or threaten to) if that student exercises their right to protect themselves...

Like, if you think this kind of thing is unnecessarily legalistic or w/e, fine, but...actual, literal laws about lots of things are necessary because people don't just naturally do what's good for each other (or their goods are contradictory or etc).

if they reduce a student's grade (or threaten to) if that student exercises their right to protect themselves

Is that's what's happening? Clearly that would be wrong.

That was part of the resolution being passed in the college case that motivated this shitty article. I also heard from someone that when the student in question approached the prof afterward, he or she was uncooperative about resolving the issue, which led to this official resolution. I've asked the person who said that for a source, not sure where they got that info.

Thanks. Following the links about that Santa Barbara case, it seems like a clear-cut case of where trigger warnings should have been used, especially as it was a film rather than a book.

“Two weeks ago, I sat in class watching a film screening and felt forced to watch two scenes in which the instance of sexual assault was insinuated and one in which an instance of rape was graphically depicted … there was no warning before this film screening … and it was incredibly difficult to sit through.”

If you didn't use the phrase TW but asked anyone if a teacher should warn students before screening a graphic rape scene I don't think there'd be much controversy. Although the article isn't about a single case it's bad form to start with that example.

To what extent should these protections extend? Do we determine what traumas should exempt you from engaging w/ particular material or should the student have the leeway to pick what he or she feels comfortable learning? For example, should someone who lost a family member to terrorism be allowed to opt out of any September 11th related literature? Should a veteran of the Iraq war be allowed to opt out of reading Civil War literature in an early American lit class? What about if you haven't experienced trauma directly but the material just makes you feel very uncomfortable? Should we let Christian fundamentalists opt out of learning about evolution in a biology course? Who is going to determine the validity of the objection?

I can't help but feel like colleges should let all applicants know that course material may upset students, and that part of education may include being confronted w/ information that can make you feel sad or hurt. If a student has a particular concern about their circumstances (like maybe they're a refugee from a war torn country) shouldn't the onus be on them to ascertain beforehand that a course won't be too debilitating to their psychology?

I'll tell you, one book that coulda done with a trigger warning is Jude the Obscure; because sweet merciful christ, I did not see that shit coming at ALL

the experience of reading this book without knowing what Hardy's going to do is one of the greatest, most horrible experiences you can have as a reader imo

in personal communication and online where you don't have the benefit of a course description/cover copy. etc, trigger warnings seem like a nice courtesy! in school they seem ridiculous to me, in my quest for knowledge I'm going to run across shit that fucks me up, the end, goes w/the territory. imo there's an easy right way to address this pedagogically i.e. the teacher says "so, we go over some pretty intense stuff in this class and if you have issues around that stuff, be advised, our themes here are" &c. alternately, when I was in college a very righteous professor taught a course on excess in art and every year the first thing he did on the first day of the semester was screen Pasolini's Salo

Yeah basically 'free speech' is a sham anyways, and using that to justify being a jerk is no better than saying "I was drunk". Let's have some personal responsibility. You are not 8. Maybe think about people other than yourself from time to time.

exactly (xp to mordy).

framed in the way DL/orbit mentioned it suggests that teachers are reacting punitively to the exercise of rights. but i would like to see what happened in the oberlin instance. i would expect it's far more likely that a student said, i won't do this thing, the content is triggering, and a teacher said, it's your grade, do the work or don't.

there is already a procedure in place for students who e.g. suffer ptsd: it is to seek a medical exemption and confer with instructors to make suitable arrangements for doing the coursework.

my understanding of the beginnings of 'trigger warning' discourse is that it had much more specifically to do with extreme or graphic content apt to provoke episodes from vulnerable readers. i.e. suffering past specific incidence of trauma in such a way that they fit the use of medical exemptions like the ones used already.

the references to triggers in the oberlin resolution seem so much broader as to have lost contact with the specific function of trigger warnings intended for e.g. ptsd sufferers.

http://new.oberlin.edu/office/equity-concerns/sexual-offense-resource-guide/prevention-support-education/support-resources-for-faculty.dot

Understand triggers, avoid unnecessary triggers, and provide trigger warnings.

A trigger is something that recalls a traumatic event to an individual. Reactions to triggers can take many different forms; individuals may feel any range of emotion during and after a trigger. Experiencing a trigger will almost always disrupt a student’s learning and may make some students feel unsafe in your classroom.

Triggers are not only relevant to sexual misconduct, but also to anything that might cause trauma. Be aware of racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, cissexism, ableism, and other issues of privilege and oppression. Realize that all forms of violence are traumatic, and that your students have lives before and outside your classroom, experiences you may not expect or understand.

this is obscurantist. a sort of immunological concept of recollection, and of whatever causes recollection, of trauma, is linked to a nonspecific range of negative emotion that is disruptive to learning—but it's clear enough how that relates to sexual violence and the trauma incurred from it.

but the last paragraph goes a lot further to import a vast range of assumptions into the already seemingly fluid concept of 'triggers'. what are the links between those sentences meant to be? whatever they are, it seems as if the intention is to legitimize a use of the concept of trigger that is broader than, let's call it, a medicalized use (i would include psychiatric usages there too). and that's a big part of my uncertainty about this, as a strategy (since it is clearly part of a shift in social justice strategy as well as in the preferred techniques for self-care being taken up and defended by people whose personal projects may or may not be that invested in social justice work). if nearly anything, whether concerned or indifferent, related to our violent cultural legacy is being re-conceived according to an immunological conception of people's emotional health in connection with any and all of their encounters with that culture, but the clinical basis for treating some cases of emotional disorder separately (because their etiology is due to incidence of some specific trauma) is minimized to such an extent that anything anyone says is triggering for them is triggering, how could that not have consequences that are worth asking about?

i don't really appreciate the 'if you resist, you are bad' implication. i think it's obviously possible to show concern for personal well-being and for systemic ills while disagreeing with this specific innovation in the practice of doing so.

http://www.thenation.com/blog/178725/feminists-talk-trigger-warnings-round

Did anyone bring up the Wellesley sculpture incident yet? That was the first thing that made me take a second look at the concept of trigger warnings and think, whoa. Interested in hearing in orbit's thoughts on that issue .

boomingest post j.

i missed this the first time around! i agree that it's a thing, "creepy liberalism," if that's what we're calling it

i don't know this writer:

But every life, every existence, belongs to one person and one person only, and no one else has the right to force this life and this existence to one side, to force it out of the way, to force it out of existence. We’ll go by ourselves, as we have the right to do. That’s part of the natural course.”
— Thomas Bernhard — from Concrete

my education is drifting back to me in dim waves atp but it seems a little... noteworthy to have an extended conversation about suffering and its place in public life in a totally non-christian way. is it fair to call trigger warnings regimented compassion?

The Oberlin website is what made me uneasy about this whole thing - when I read "Be aware of racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, cissexism" I thought good luck studying literature then. I think TWs should be used as sparingly as possible. In the Santa Barbara case a rape survivor would have every reason to be pissed off with having a filmed rape scene sprung on her without warning, although I'd rather that was addressed with the teacher in question, who failed to exercise basic consideration for his/her students, rather than tackled with blanket application of TWs.

This piece that Valenti linked to is a good take on it and the idea of the "student-customer".

http://tressiemc.com/2014/03/05/the-trigger-warned-syllabus/

goole, one of the reasons i emphasized liberalism is that besides the context of rights and harms i was thinking of mill's utilitarianism, since that kind of rationalized/regimented epicurean or christian-derived project to ameliorate or eliminate suffering seems to feed the readiness to adopt trigger-warning policies as much as, say, a more justice-minded attitude toward reform might also. and for mill one of the chief virtues/passions to cultivate, for someone who wants to extend the application of the greatest happiness principle, is compassion (which in his description sounds basically like a feeling of oneness with all beings). (i don't know it well, but i think the flip side would be something like judith shklar's take on liberalism as motivated above all by a hatred of cruelty, as the chief vice.) and it fits with the way he roots the individual projects pursued in 'on liberty' in a richer picture of self-culture than just the yes-happiness-no-harms-no-unjustified-coercions picture of him that one can take from a looser reading of the utilitarian-reformist liberal project. (we want not just happiness or freedom from pain, but the satisfactions that come from directing our own growth as people, from being able to make ourselves whole.) which seems significant in this context since we're talking about the use of trigger warnings in education.

but 'regimented compassion' is a good term for it i think because it suggests that there's something odd about the undertaking. consideration would probably be a better term for it, in relation to ideas about the decorum and decency of speech and public behavior, but including 'compassion' in the phrase suggests the more fundamental motive while reminding how in certain ways the arrangement being promoted—more extensive use of trigger warnings to enable individuals to manage their own self-protection—effectively brings about the self-exclusion or self-absconding of people in need of compassion from a public space in which others would otherwise confront suffering toward which to be compassionate or not. so that policy officially acknowledges the existence of suffering but delegates its treatment to the sufferers, who if they are lucky will be suffering enough and in acknowledged-enough ways to be able to find some other private or official remedy (say, a therapist), and permits those who issue trigger warnings to think of themselves as having discharged the claims of suffering upon their attention because they have changed their behavior so solicitously.

While we're talking about racism and trauma/PTSD:

http://colorlines.com/archives/2014/03/suicide_crisis_among_native_youth_on_reservations.html

Native youth are more than three times more likely to commit suicide (a number that increases to more than 10 times on some reservations), and have post traumatic stress symptoms on par with Iraq War veterans.

http://gawker.com/triggered-college-professor-argues-for-right-to-tear-1550250284

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fighting_words

thems triggerin words, podner

http://www.happytrails.org/_images/trigger/01-sm-Illustration%20Photo.jpg

so this happened: http://gawker.com/starbucks-apologizes-to-louisiana-woman-over-satanic-ca-1556322885?utm_campaign=socialflow_gawker_facebook&utm_source=gawker_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

A liberal friend of mine who also happens to be Christian was curiously defending this employee, indicating the customer was 'privileged' and guilty of "#firstworldproblems". I don't see how this is acceptable, though - employees shouldn't be speaking on behalf of their companies, and similar to me not being appreciative of having a Bible verse written on the side of my coffee cup, I don't think someone of religious persuasion would appreciate this kind of a message. At the end of the day, this isn't an earth-shattering event, no, but it is something that could get that employee (rightfully) shitcanned - people order a drink, not unsolicited symbolism.

I mean hell, I have Sigil of Baphomet jewelry so obviously I am not offended by these symbols, but I get a little unnerved when some liberals seem to hold themselves to lower standards than they do conservatives.

the defense was largely strange too - "companies have a right to spread whatever message they desire"...well last I checked, I'm fairly sure Starbucks wasn't endorsing Laveyan Satanism or the LEft Hand Path etc etc

The kid was a dopey jerk for doing that at work, the customer was overly dramatic in being so shocked that they couldn't speak to someone at the time. What they meant to say is that they didn't want an in-person confrontation. Unless you were the subject of satanic ritual abuse (lol) ain't no numbers in caramel gonna make you triggered.

the defense sounds oddly like they're trying to connect dopey barista to hobby lobby owners

I would agree with the customer's defense being code for conflict avoidance.

and yeah, this was more or less an idiot employee trying to be subversive. an entertaining debate ensued about whether this pentagram was Satanic in intent; because the cup is spherical, one can't easily tell whether it's inverted or classic in design!

that is a dumb debate, it's next to a 666, he was trying to rock out with the devil

last I checked, I'm fairly sure Starbucks wasn't endorsing Laveyan Satanism or the LEft Hand Path etc etc

― Neanderthal, Wednesday, April 2, 2014 5:35 PM

that's exactly right. nothing to see here.

http://cafesguide.com/assets/pages/68/9d/689deffca5a6f86c2c35858601ca6b58_330.jpg

I feel bad for this woman, I suppose, but I would be delighted if this happened to me. especially at a Starbucks!

finally figured out the gimmick for my future coffee shop.

i keep meaning to respond to j's long post up there and not getting around to it.

would love to see that.

i don't have a problem with half-measure meliorism, is the short versh

idk how religious i would have to be to find that bored adolescent chicanery more unpleasant than the 'coffee' itself, probably somewhere between fred phelps peace be upon his soul and torquemada

i would like that!

i was thinking some more about the genealogy of generalized 'triggering' talk after i read about that uc prof who tore up some protesters' signs because she said they triggered her.

i feel like i missed out on some change in academic fashion between the early 00s and now that expanded the scope of 'triggering'. my sense back then, around a lot of mostly white feminists and other activists (who still cared about issues like intersectionality), was that the trauma-studies-style thinking about triggering was not so much in the air yet and if ever, people talked about triggering mostly in connection with rape and sexual assault.

but i also feel like i lack perspective on how much influence the internet may have had in the meantime. looking around on tumblr, i was reminded somewhat of old livejournal days, thanks to a really widespread use of 'triggering' that seems to get underemphasized in the current discussions (prompted by e.g. the college curricula stories): on online diarists, basically, warning their readers (probably diarists themselves) that they're going to talk about self-harm and suicidal thoughts. which seems like a different vector for generalized talk about triggering. it goes along more closely with a style of self, performed in a space where vulnerability is given special license and where every reader is likely to be in a particularly vulnerable place if they share any of the triggerable issues they're reading about. i can see how enough talk about triggering in that sort of context would significantly open up the sense people attached to the word.

er, some xps there

http://www.thenation.com/blog/179160/cancelcolbert-and-return-anti-liberal-left

Call it left-wing anti-liberalism: the idea, captured by Herbert Marcuse in his 1965 essay “Repressive Tolerance,” that social justice demands curbs on freedom of expression. “It is possible to define the direction in which prevailing institutions, policies, opinions would have to be changed in order to improve the chance of a peace which is not identical with cold war and a little hot war, and a satisfaction of needs which does not feed on poverty, oppression, and exploitation,” he wrote. “Consequently, it is also possible to identify policies, opinions, movements which would promote this chance, and those which would do the opposite. Suppression of the regressive ones is a prerequisite for the strengthening of the progressive ones.”

i dont know marcuse that well, though i presume he says such things because he believes in some objective or marxist historical end game to be accomplished?

i think if you've abandoned that presumption you can still adapt what he's saying to the necessity of making "decisions" that will, in a sense, leave you open on one side; or sort of the pragmatic "half-measure meliorism" that goole talks about above. the other "half" being the one that inevitably bites you in the ass. which i think we have to accept as "ok."

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/04/14/oberlin-backs-down-trigger-warnings-professors-who-teach-sensitive-material

these kinds of policies sorta amount to a novel version of in loco parentis

http://duncanlaw.wordpress.com/2014/04/21/elements-of-liberalism/

http://www.w3.org/TR/2010/WD-emotionml-20100729/

1.2 The challenge of defining a generally usable Emotion Markup Language

Any attempt to standardize the description of emotions using a finite set of fixed descriptors is doomed to failure: even scientists cannot agree on the number of relevant emotions, or on the names that should be given to them. Even more basically, the list of emotion-related states that should be distinguished varies depending on the application domain and the aspect of emotions to be focused. Basically, the vocabulary needed depends on the context of use. On the other hand, the basic structure of concepts is less controversial: it is generally agreed that emotions involve triggers, appraisals, feelings, expressive behavior including physiological changes, and action tendencies; emotions in their entirety can be described in terms of categories or a small number of dimensions; emotions have an intensity, and so on. For details, see Scientific Descriptions of Emotions in the Final Report of the Emotion Incubator Group.

Given this lack of agreement on descriptors in the field, the only practical way of defining an EmotionML is the definition of possible structural elements, their valid child elements and attributes, but to allow users to "plug in" vocabularies that they consider appropriate for their work. A central repository of such vocabularies can serve as a recommended starting point; where that seems inappropriate, users can create their custom vocabularies.

i feel as if the w3c is trolling me

many xps

I think the idea that literary texts should have to come with a 'trigger warning' is not one I would endorse if I worked for a university - I'd expect that by definition, if you're studying a text you're going to be handling it (and its messages and attempts on the reader ...) with care, even totally deconstructing it.

i.e. something must have gone wrong somewhere if people really feel that in the university, ffs, Chinua Achebe, ffs, should be labelled with 'CONTAINS RACISM AND IMPERIALISM', ffs.

Sure, and it's not a big deal for me either. But if a group of people say it's a problem for them I don't see why it's such a big deal. I think I need people who object to the idea to explain why they find it so objectionable.

I suppose I resent the implication (implied by who?) that not labelling Chinua Achebe's novel with boilerplate warnings about the Racism and Imperialism contained therein would be to create a space that excludes non-white people

It also feels like the people in charge of student welfare have occupied the English department w/out really understanding what books are

English Departments have never understood what books are. Anyway, my impression of 'trigger warnings' is just a 'heads up' that there might be rape, racial abuse, extreme violence etc., which as I said has been going on for a long time (i.e. when I was at uni in the 90s).

I don't think the core of the objections to trigger warnings are really concerned with this or that deployment of the concept (and perhaps that's where they go wrong). the problem, or at least my sense of what the objectors have a problem with, is that it's not an idea that can be universalized (what's offensive/upsetting can only be linked to the individual experiencing said feelings--unless you want to arbitrarily declare who is and is not able to be "triggered" by something, anything) and leads to a suspicion that said warnings are merely an extension of a narcissistic view of the world (of young people in particular) that rejects what does not please us--a posture that tends to run counter to the hoary liberal humanist idea of being "educated."

it's kind of a reversal of previous attempts to communally or societally determine what is or is not "acceptable"--in the increasing absence of those communal standards we're forced back on limitless (ie, individual) potential determinations (and contexts) of that question. that's the source of the unease, perhaps. the irony, of course, is that the idea of a "trigger warning" is itself a kind of communal preference for individual standards.

the other irony is that all of this takes place against the backdrop of a media environment which is "anything" goes--hence, perhaps, the heightened consciousness about what we choose to expose ourselves to.

the problem, or at least my sense of what the objectors have a problem with, is that (what's offensive/upsetting) os not an idea that can be universalized

That describes me fairly well. (The idea that something can be labelled as universally offensive/upsetting is itself kind of hoary liberal humanist, no?)

a lot like "check your privilege" I think the debate is whether it's an idea that can exported from it's original context (internet based communities?) or pragmatic intent to the world at large (particularly education).

goddamnit I swear to god I know the difference between "its" and "it's".

xp

I also don't like how quickly a concept has jumped from online safe spaces (communities you choose to get involved with and adhere to the standards of) to the university.

'All potentially triggering posts must carry TW' is one good rough and ready axiom to have in place if you want a discussion forum that isn't going to be full of horrible stupid shit - it's fine. But for a university seminar?

You see, we thought alike

But if a group of people say it's a problem for them I don't see why it's such a big deal.

It only becomes a big deal if the person who sees the warning and decides not to read the material insists that they should receive the same credit as someone who did read the material. If they drop the class rather than risk being triggered, then I see no harm in the warning. If they want credit for something they did not do, then that opens a huge can o' worms. You'd either see a massive increase in people claiming they have triggers in order to avoid course work, or else instructors will be forced to erase vast swaths of material from academic settings.

more on this:

Warning: The Literary Canon Could Make Students Squirm

Colleges across the country this spring have been wrestling with student requests for what are known as “trigger warnings,” explicit alerts that the material they are about to read or see in a classroom might upset them or, as some students assert, cause symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder in victims of rape or in war veterans.

The warnings, which have their ideological roots in feminist thought, have gained the most traction at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where the student government formally called for them. But there have been similar requests from students at Oberlin College, Rutgers University, the University of Michigan, George Washington University and other schools.

...“We’re not talking about someone turning away from something they don’t want to see,” Ms. Loverin said in a recent interview. “People suddenly feel a very real threat to their safety — even if it is perceived. They are stuck in a classroom where they can’t get out, or if they do try to leave, it is suddenly going to be very public.”

The most vociferous criticism has focused on trigger warnings for materials that have an established place on syllabuses across the country. Among the suggestions for books that would benefit from trigger warnings are Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice” (contains anti-Semitism) and Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway” (addresses suicide).

Also, Vox recently did a Q&A with the author of a Nation piece on the 'anti-liberal left':

Vox: To be basic: What do you mean by anti-liberalism on the left?

Goldberg: A belief on certain parts of the left that liberal values like free speech and tolerance for differing opinions should be jettisoned when they get in the way of social justice… I think you can see echoes of that in that famous Harvard op-ed from earlier this year, which basically says that research should be jettisoned if it's not going to promote social justice.

This is an old idea. In American politics, leftism and liberalism are often taken as synonymous, but they're really not. There is a long, long tradition of "liberal" being used as an epithet by people on the left to mean a sellout, a person who's more concerned with the ideas of abstract justice and rights that work to ensure the continuation of the existing order. So this is an old, old division…

You often see this phenomenon when Democrats or liberals are in power. That allows people on the left to direct their ire about continuing injustice onto the failures of liberalism as opposed to the successes of conservatism.

And so obviously you saw it with [Lyndon B. Johnson], and the rise of the Weathermen and other groups that came out of the fracturing of Students for a Democratic Society. You saw it — to a much lesser extent, and to a much less serious extent — under Bill Clinton, which was the heyday of political correctness and Naderism. And I think you're seeing it again now.

There is a long, long tradition of "liberal" being used as an epithet by people on the left to mean a sellout, a person who's more concerned with the ideas of abstract justice and rights that work to ensure the continuation of the existing order. You often see this phenomenon when Democrats or liberals are in power. That allows people on the left to direct their ire about continuing injustice onto the failures of liberalism as opposed to the successes of conservatism.

and we see it here on ILX (hello Dr. Morbius).

obvious solution is just don't teach these books/authors, maybe don't teach these classes period.

it'll all be "technical writing" soon enough.

very real

This TW on books at university thing sounds eerily similar to 'Christian family review websites'

It's interesting to see where one's thresholds lie though because I don't know what side of this the me who started this thread wd have been on

It isn't strange to me at all that many people find some literature frightening and disgusting. It would be much stranger if no one did.

There's also a sort of emotional extortion racket going on here:

“Be aware of racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, cissexism, ableism, and other issues of privilege and oppression,” the guide said. “Realize that all forms of violence are traumatic, and that your students have lives before and outside your classroom, experiences you may not expect or understand.”

I don't think 'realize' used as a command has any place in the university tbh and the idiotic snarky vibes of 'you may not expect or understand' are not very chill imho

If YOU teach your class of adults this book, YOU are going to give them traumatic flashbacks

But hey, we're just asking you to be aware of students emotional state. What could possibly be wrong with that?

A cranky liberal reporter who sounds an awful lot like a Tea Partier these days posted the NYT article. I wrote this on his wall:

At first I was on your side; it's my instinct to avoid balking from the demands of literature. But a friend who's a college student and a fellow professor both posted on my wall last month and explained it doesn't sound so bad. The latter said he routinely warns his students about graphic material, years before the introduction of "trigger warnings" (terrible jargon, by the way). Not so he can offer alternatives, mind, but to give students an idea what to expect. I tend to think students can Google titles on a syllabus and read synopses before choosing whether they can handle the course.

rateyourtriggerwarnings.com

man all I want are chili peppers

I want an outrigger warning on tv shows with plot points that will never be explained

I don't think 'realize' used as a command has any place in the university tbh and the idiotic snarky vibes of 'you may not expect or understand' are not very chill imho

this is why the movement into institutional policy is significant, it's a push to raise, let's say, ideas, discourse styles, and practices (related to consciousness-raising circles, survivor groups, etc.) which make sense or work in certain contexts to the level of official practice. but the contortion of 'realize' (… 'the extremely general and unargued proposition that all violence is traumatic'…) suggests that it takes some moral oomph to get the translation to take. it imagines that an institutional policy could tell you how to conduct yourself in something like the same way, and with the same force, as a person you are confronting but not listening to or not fully acknowledging. when what the establishment of an aim in an institution's policies really seeks is that you normally conduct yourself as directed without the need for confrontation.

of course, a more cynical reason to establish policies is that their establishment automatically warrants their use as sanctions against nonconforming conduct.

i'm a little mixed on this. this trigger warning debate, and the whole "social justice warrior" thing, seems like a bizarre authoritarian crusade against the fact that life can suck pretty bad sometimes, and we're pretty damn powerless to change much about it. so we get people who conduct these misguided battles against reality itself. outside of this issue, "checking your privilege" isn't going to do jack shit for anyone about anything. teaching people how to cope and manage in a world with privilege would probably be more useful imo. but that doesn't have the same satisfying taste of vengeance, or the illusion of power you get to wield over others as a consolation prize for your own bitter take on life.

i've had PTSD most of my life. trigger warnings have been appreciated in some circumstances, but the times i was triggered in high school ("triggered" as in literally couldn't leave my bedroom for a month) helped me to face the hard truths about what was going on around me and inside of me. protecting people like this isn't going to help them in the long run. teaching people how to cope with what's triggered is far, far, far better than campaigning for "trigger warnings". misguided compassion via authoritarianism. kids are weird these days.

i guess "trigger warnings" and "checking your privilege" belong to a victim mentality that puts responsibility for your personal comfort in other peoples' hands, yet gives you a sort-of negative power over them if they fail to do this. so it's passive aggressive, too.

The word 'art' or 'literature' surely is a trigger warning in itself - and certainly genre terms like 'tragedy', or 'elegy'

spectrum, i think the idea is that other people share a contributory responsibility where issues of privilege and oppression are involved, and the structures that sustain them cannot be 'dismantled' without awareness of them

sounds like an idea cooked up by a bunch of privileged kids with no experience whatsoever in the harsh realities of life.

"c'mon gang, if we can convince 10 joe schmoes they're privileged, we can rebuild the community center!" "yeah!

http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/ciu/44/db/12e8c6e543340a7e9d9a0a.L._V192535042_SX200_.jpg

lol check out this idealistic child

http://www.popularresistance.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/bell-hooks.png

what a dumbshit teen with no experiences in the harsh realities of life

http://bw.edu/news/mcintosh/mcintoshphoto.jpg

god, grow the fuck up

alfred's professor friend seems to handle it the way i would: put a couple of disclaimers in the syllabus, and let the students decide if they want to take the class or not. even this is a bit silly to me, but if it makes people happy, i don't see the harm

xp didn't bell hooks recently call beyonce a "terrorist" for making some stupid sexy music video? that's friggin' george w. bush talk.

i guess "trigger warnings" and "checking your privilege" belong to a victim mentality that puts responsibility for your personal comfort in other peoples' hands, yet gives you a sort-of negative power over them if they fail to do this. so it's passive aggressive, too.

― Spectrum, Sunday, May 18, 2014 1:11 PM (6 hours ago)

THIS, and ILX provides many helpful examples in action

need a trigger warning for this thread, tbh

alfred's professor friend seems to handle it the way i would: put a couple of disclaimers in the syllabus, and let the students decide if they want to take the class or not.

This seems perfectly reasonable. English Lit is unlikely to be more harrowing for students than criminal law or 20th century history but potentially more likely to take them by surprise if they aren't aware of the content in advance. There are two elements - flagging books that you can reasonably imagine might get a strong adverse emotional reaction from a small number of students and being able to deal with that reaction if it occurs (not making a scene if someone leaves the room, not flunking students if they explain that they don't feel they can participate in a class, etc). Neither seems particularly onerous.

^

yeah, reasonable middle ground is reasonable

Ilx, have any of you had any classmates or friends who have had bad reactions to material presented in lit courses? I mean, from the articles I've read on this topic have focused on student groups who want to implement trigger warnings and the reactions of teachers and administrators to those requests. I really don't have any idea about the student victims in this.

I've never known anyone to have anyone to have negative reactions. But I've also never know anyone to complain when a lecturer or tutor has warned about racism or rape in something to be studied. To me it seems like such a non-issue. If some people have a problem, in what way is anyone else put out by such a warning?

It seems unpleasantly tied into 'anti-PC' thought.

i don't have a problem with teachers telling their classes that something they're about to see or read has potentially traumatizing content, i've had a number of profs who did that. the specific complaint that sparked the santa barbara thing -- a student who was upset that a teacher had shown a movie with a violent rape scene without warning the class -- seems completely reasonable to me. otoh the trigger warning guidelines are so broad that i can't imagine they'd be all that effective, seems like every single book would need a trigger warning.

a english professor friend of mine posted the following on facebook: "Dear Students, If you aren't disturbed by what we read this semester, you prob haven't done the reading. Love, Prof"

The widely quoted Oberlin (iirc) guidelines did this issue no favours. If you ask people whether a teacher should warn students before showing a film including a violent rape most will say yes of course. If you show them the guidelines about Achebe most will find them foolish at best and dangerous at worst. I'm fine with asking teachers to bear potential triggers in mind but as soon as it gets codified it looks terrible. Likewise the Tumblr that was cited in a few places with the epic list that includes "slimy things", the word "stupid" and "Death or dying".

It's just pretty amazing that anyone could wander into a college literature class any time after their Charlotte's Web years and not be braced for trauma.

The Tumblr list people (including The Guardian) were linking to is a two-person operation that hasn't been updated in over a year. I'm rather suspicious of the intentions of anyone going out of their way to find marginal interpretations to ridicule the concept as whole.

I see your point but this one of the first dozen Google results for "trigger warnings". You don't have to go out of your way. Nor have most of the articles I've read ridiculed the whole concept, only its application in academia rather than feminist blogs and other "safe" spaces.

what's the least charitable interpretation you can give for ppl who ridicule trigger warnings? that they're not empathetic enough?

that they are elitist?

really? i mean, anything can have elitism in it but that seems more like the uncharitable reading of pro-trigger warning ppl than anti.

they have experience with the harsh realities of life

If one of the first dozen Google results for "trigger warning" is someone's abandoned blog project, it might not be the all-pervasive threat to academic freedom it's being painted as. As with anything, drawing the line of common sense is never going to be entirely straightforward but it seems a little dishonest to point to extreme examples rather than working with the ones that are actually being discussed in academic contexts.

xps.

"Hey doll, if you weren't prepared for the cold hard realities of life maybe you shouldn't have chosen to study English Literature at university"

that's how it looks from my perspective, but i also regularly warn my students about stuff that they might find disturbing.

And I wouldn't criticise anyone who doesn't want to include trigger warnings - but what is the criticisim of those who do?

my concern w/ trigger warnings comes primarily from growing up in a community + going to schools with tons and tons of censorship (charedi judaism). we weren't allowed to read literature w/ sex of any kind, violence, any kind of message that might undermine Torah values, etc. i once had a personal copy of As I Lay Dying taken away by the Rabbis bc it wasn't appropriate reading material. so i get all upset about any suggestion of censoring literature. even if this is just encouraging teachers to disclose upsetting thematic material before reading a new book, i can't help but feel like mandatory trigger warnings will inevitably lead to censoring, even if it's just self-censoring bc why bother with the inevitable complaints? when i was in 12th grade our English Lit teacher assigned lord of the flies, but the rabbis thought that was too disturbing so instead we all read Around the World in 80 Days. 12th grade. for real.

i think the criticism (or least favorable interpretation of pro-TW ppl) is that this is a kind of creepy censorship masked in the rhetoric of empathy + respect

I guess I just don't see the leap between description of content and censorship. After all, such descriptions happen in all sorts of media all the time.

It's difficult to square the idea of a liberal college student base that wants to study more works dealing with racism, colonialism, the range of negative experiences women have traditionally had to put up with, etc, etc, with one that's deliberately trying to keep those topics off the curriculum.

yeah, it's not even like ppl are complaining about riefenstahl or birth of a nation - explicitly ideological works that were intended to make political/racial statements. ppl are complaining about achebe!

(i meant to add, explicitly ideological works *that are frequently taught in universities)

and The Great Gatsby!

maybe it's Gatsby's pink suit?

WARNING: This novel may contain outrages against fashion.

That's the jump that bothers me: who wants to keep it off the curriculum? (it's possible this story has outpaced me somewhat)

x-posts to sharivari.

I watched Birth of a Nation at uni - and we discussed the problems raised by it before we watched it.

In fact, the problems raised were the main (only? Sepends on your opinion of the film I guess) reasons for watching it.

yeah, it's not even like ppl are complaining about riefenstahl or birth of a nation - explicitly ideological works that were intended to make political/racial statements. ppl are complaining about achebe!

This is where the censorship idea doesn't stack up for me. If you asked the pro-warning crowd whether Achebe should be taken off the curriculum, what percentage do you think would say yes?

xp

then why even mention it as an example?

Oberlin College has published an official document on triggers, advising faculty members to "be aware of racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, cissexism, ableism, and other issues of privilege and oppression," to remove triggering material when it doesn't "directly" contribute to learning goals and "strongly consider" developing a policy to make "triggering material" optional. Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, it states, is a novel that may "trigger readers who have experienced racism, colonialism, religious persecution, violence, suicide and more." Warnings have been proposed even for books long considered suitable material for high-schoolers: Last month, a Rutgers University sophomore suggested that an alert for F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby say, "TW: suicide, domestic abuse and graphic violence."

Warning to the Trigger Warning: may contain spoilers

like why are we creating a dialogue in our academic communities where we assume achebe might not be fit for every student to read? on the contrary - everyone should read achebe.

Yeah I was just about to say to Sharivari that the Oberlin guidelines sparked this recent debate, not some Tumblr.

and also, if you are too triggered to read eg Heart of Darkness (which isn't about racism but is actually racist) then maybe you're too sensitive a soul for college tbph

“Be aware of racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, cissexism, ableism, and other issues of privilege and oppression,” the guide said. “Realize that all forms of violence are traumatic, and that your students have lives before and outside your classroom, experiences you may not expect or understand.” For example, it said, while “Things Fall Apart” by Chinua Achebe — a novel set in colonial-era Nigeria — is a “triumph of literature that everyone in the world should read,” it could “trigger readers who have experienced racism, colonialism, religious persecution, violence, suicide and more.”

i keep coming back to this. there is something so goddamn infuriating to me about the fact that they used this particular example. maybe it's the suggestion that a bunch of college students somehow 'know better,' are more enlightened, whatever, than an actual african author who was, you know, actually trying to make his readers more aware of all these awful things they so smugly act like they're the first ppl in history to know about.

It doesn't sound to me like they are trying to remove it from the course, though - just encouraging people to flag what it's about in advance and potentially not make it mandatory in the rather unlikely event that anyone feels it's too traumatic. It's difficult to see how any course on contemporary literature that isn't focused solely on white people wouldn't run into those issues at some point - i don't think the objective is to get professors to just teach books by white authors.

But what about schools who want departments to write curricula that includes alternatives?

I guess I'm also skeptical enough of the triggering thing to begin with, which isn't really under debate here, but forms some of the resistance to TW i think.

"You're allergic to lobster? Cool. Here's some mac and cheese. Read the warning label first."

like really? you can't read a piece of literature about sexism/racism/violence without having a PTSD flashback? i guess it's possible but idk. seems unlikely to me.

Surely we've all been viscerally moved by pieces of writing? If you haven't then maybe you shouldn't be studying such things. And the people who are best in a position to describe their reaction to such things are the people themselves, no?

i guess the most unfavorable interpretation of pro-TW ppl is that they lack the emotional maturity to distinguish between being upset by material and being damaged by material.

I'm reasonably sure that the majority of students who have experienced racism are going to be some of the most enthusiastic backers of courses that include works by contemporary black authors. This is about finding a considerate way to accommodate a tiny minority who, for whatever reason, do have actual PTSD.

(just a side note - it's possible to be pro-TW, or TW-agnostic, without ever feeling the need for such things oneself. I've never felt the need for such things, but if someone feels more comfortable with them, and they don't affect me, I really don't care)

what's the least charitable interpretation you can give for ppl who ridicule trigger warnings? that they're not empathetic enough?

― Mordy, Monday, May 19, 2014 1:03 PM (35 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that they enjoy the feeling of telling someone to suck it up

hope the eng. dept at Oberlin gives 'trigger-warning: unemployment' to people enrolling their programs

i've had PTSD. triggers are things like ... smells, or if a day looks like a certain day because it's reminiscent of some traumatic time in life, or gestures or the way people hold themselves, tone of voice, etc. books never gave me any sort-of problem, i mean, you're in complete control over a book! not so much when it's a stranger and you're out in public.

i just get the feeling the people pushing this policy don't really understand the issue or even what they're doing at all. why not publicize PTSD and lead it into seeking support services? that would actually be helpful and useful for people. if i were in college and people made this trigger warning hooplah it probably wouldn't have even registered with me.

if, on the other hand, these social justice types communicated a compassionate, educational message about the issue with the aim of teaching people how to get help and support, that would actually have been helpful. this is about helping people ... right?

in all the chatter about this i've seen resistance coming from teachers themselves (self described anyway).

among professors there's an inevitable and general 'goddam kids' mentality esp. with regard to reading assignments. i think there's an institutional suspicion of anything that might allow students to get out of reading something *and still* be able to get credit for the course

that's probably the crux of 'conservative' (aside from blanket hostility to feminism or people in subject positions as a whole) is that it's being described as an opt-out from work.

xp to sharivari: well, i think a widespread if ill-defined conception is that minorities experience stress levels and symptoms akin to ptsd in virtue of their routine life experiences (the claim derald wing sue makes, tracing it back to chester pierce's work on black americans), so that the accommodations aren't intended to serve only exceptional cases but to serve equity more broadly for all minorities in higher ed. likewise with feminist approaches to 'climate'.

can you link to someone making a strong argument for that claim? (that minorities experience symptoms comparable to ptsd)

This is about finding a considerate way to accommodate a tiny minority who, for whatever reason, do have actual PTSD.

it seems like the easiest way to do this would be for someone to create an open listing of the possibly emotionally disturbing content of commonly discussed books and films, and then put the onus on the small portion of students who might benefit from a trigger warning to check it out themselves rather than requiring professors/departments to do it. on the rare occasion that a student is assigned Things Fall Apart and then checks the content listings and thinks they might be disturbed by it, then I'm sure the professor would be more than willing to come up with an alternate reading.

oh nm, i see that it's that microaggression thing. another thing i'm in love w/ xp

Do you think Wing Sue and those fighting the same corner are aiming to get works dealing with racism, sexism and colonialism taken off the curriculum just in case or trying to facilitate an understanding that people might react badly even if they haven't been in directly comparable situations and should be treated compassionately?

it seems like the easiest way to do this would be for someone to create an open listing of the possibly emotionally disturbing content of commonly discussed books and films, and then put the onus on the small portion of students who might benefit from a trigger warning to check it out themselves rather than requiring professors/departments to do it. on the rare occasion that a student is assigned Things Fall Apart and then checks the content listings and thinks they might be disturbed by it, then I'm sure the professor would be more than willing to come up with an alternate reading.

Yep, that sounds fairly reasonable - but the professors are probably still going to need guidelines on what is expected of them in that situation.

yeah mordy, you can hunt down derald wing sue's 'microaggressions in everyday life' if you do the stealing e-books thing

here's a reference to a recent study working toward the same end

http://www.voice-online.co.uk/article/new-study-links-post-traumatic-stress-disorder-racism

And professors are teaching the same books year on year, rather than the student studying once, and the professor knows the works better than anyone.

something something the establishment of pathological pervasive psychodrama to the level of daily social interaction

It's all a bit "It's political correctness gone mad" to me.

among professors there's an inevitable and general 'goddam kids' mentality esp. with regard to reading assignments. i think there's an institutional suspicion of anything that might allow students to get out of reading something *and still* be able to get credit for the course

These guys are the ones posting on Facebook – the orneriest bunch. I have to resist doing the same.

oh damn, this isn't about mental health, it's about striking out against heteronormative cisgendered ableist terrorists and just using PTSD as a hook. no wonder they aren't talking about counseling.

i've clowned myself in more ways than one in this thread

idk, i studied History at A-Level and Law at university. There was a situation in which a girl who had lost family in the Holocaust had an extreme panic attack while we were being shown a documentary about the death camps and asked to be excused - which the teacher agreed to without any question. Similarly, there were huge sections of my degree that had a focus on gender violence, accidental death / dismemberment and war crimes. There was an understanding that if you didn't feel you could participate, you didn't have to. The idea that literature can be as powerful as fact in bringing up horrible reactions in people doesn't strike me as absurd. It also doesn't mean that you don't still teach it within a framework of understanding.

Oberlin College has published an official document on triggers, advising faculty members to remove triggering material when it doesn't "directly" contribute to learning goals

is this going to be like redacting documents?

I'm wondering if there's a way to do this without falling into the trap of University Admin Doing A Heavy-Handed Thing in a Tone-Deaf Way for ostensibly laudable reasons.

As a student of a major American public university in from '94-00, I walked into the Admin already trying grand gestures and missing wildly.

What about asking at the beginning of the first semester if anyone would like to talk in private about PTSD and triggering material so that the teacher can bear that in mind? Responding to the needs of individual students is what teachers should do. It's the blanket application of TWs that feels problematic because it could lead to certain texts being avoided. But idk, maybe that's stigmatising. I can see why a student might not want to start university by talking to a teacher they don't yet know about a rape or eating disorder. The only justification for blanket TWs I can see is if they've very very limited, eg the film showing a graphic rape scene.

these aren't comparable but i had to have numerous conversations w/ professors about my crohn's disease throughout college when it flared up and forced me to miss classes. it was embarrassing telling them that i had a bowel disorder, esp when i had to explain exactly what it entailed, but i figured that since i was the dude with CD i should be the one to handle it personally w/ the professors as it came up as an issue.

My university uses "learning goals" too. For everything.

senior year of high school was when my PTSD was at its worst. in psychology class we were watching Sybil and the teacher warned us that the ending had graphic scenes and we were free to excuse ourselves. i chose to do that since it related to what i was dealing with, but damn it made me feel weird as hell, and people with any brains in 'em could figure out i probably had issues with that shit.

trigger warnings do seem a little stigmatizing in a way, particularly since i feel like i'm taking a big leap in even discussing this stuff openly, so that's why i prefer people being taught coping skills over trying to carve out a special class for them and enact and enforce a university policy like this. but i honestly get the feeling this debate has more to do with identity politics than PTSD, unfortunately.

i don't think this is about censorship exactly, and most normal college instructors are standardly aware enough of how to handle individual student issues pertaining to course participation, and sensitive enough to try to deal appropriately with them when off-book (say, not foreseen in syllabus policy) issues arise.

i think it's more likely about internecine power struggles within the university (and marginally involving interested parties outside the university, or without direct authority in the discussions, like students, for whom the trend has been toward greater and greater assertion of, i guess you could call it, the right to options).

do ppl who self-harm really feel a compulsion to self-harm just by hearing about someone else doing it?

idk we seem to be veering off track here.

is there anything inherent in trigger warnings that leads to censorship? if not, isn't it just a version the sticker on a dvd box?

Well, that's a whole nother problem. Much like the Parental Advisory Explicit Lyrics stickers on early 90s CD cases, which allowed savvy consumers to buy albums with a whole lotta s words and F words, there's the danger of this attracting a creepy kind of student who specifically scans course syllabi for rape, violence, and imperialism.

Just kidding, but you know there's gonna be at least one dude.

mordy, i don't know about the evidence but i think it's kind of a werther effect deal? of course in online communities the danger involves being alone and isolated, which makes you all the more vulnerable to being adversely influenced/affected, given the issues around self-harm.

i think it's more likely about internecine power struggles within the university (and marginally involving interested parties outside the university, or without direct authority in the discussions, like students, for whom the trend has been toward greater and greater assertion of, i guess you could call it, the right to options).

i dont think this point can be overstated right now.

i wonder if the end game for this is either a) a total backlash and subsequent ridicule of the concept or b) an MPAA style ratings system for courses and book (and also "voluntarily" adopted)

if not, isn't it just a version the sticker on a dvd box?

it's like a version of the sticker on a dvd box where each individual store that sells dvds has to come up with their own film rating system and policies and then print out the sticker and put it on the dvd box

i think a broader point (for me as a wannabe english prof) is that literature courses tend to be electives for non-majors. if you are a literature major and are at risk for being triggered then perhaps another major would be more suitable. if you are not a literature major then maybe non-literature electives are more appropriate. but then can we say that a history course, a sociology course, can be triggering? and why or why not?

well, that line wouldn't fly in philosophy, because it would be regarded as exclusionary right where adapting one's pedagogy would better serve the discipline's universal aspirations.

also u can't teach contemporary continental w/out teaching trauma

if a history course isn't triggering you're obviously doing it wrong

i don't really have a problem with warning labels if that's all these are, altho i guess it does make the student-teacher experience into that much more of a customer-shopkeeper one, which, overall, is the wrong one. but that's what happens when you charge that fucking much.

it's funny though some vestigial "universal aspirations" is, i think, a small part of why some lit profs bristle at this idea. it's to forfeit, perhaps once and for all, that literature has some universal/humanist vocation.

and like i said, i think for the parties behind institutionalizing the practice, it's an equity issue, trying to make sure as few people as possible are prevented from enjoying the benefits of a university education through the institution's failure to adequately adapt to their needs

it is a shame that it only complicates the humanities. trigger warnings on econ classes imo. tie that shit up in so much red tape.

trying to make sure as few people as possible are prevented from enjoying the benefits of a university education through the institution's failure to adequately adapt to their needs

yeah for sure. maybe i should copy and paste that adorno quote again, haha.

seen on an academic blog, seems diagnostically useful

Try to imagine Foucault obediently inserting trigger warnings in a syllabus.

'but foucault was kind of a dick'

Foucault didn't heed trigger warnings did he

all books should carry a trigger warning for illiteracy-shaming

trying to make sure as few people as possible are prevented from enjoying the benefits of a university education through the institution's failure to adequately adapt to their needs

see, here's my issue with this debate. PTSD isn't like being in a wheelchair where you need ramps to go places. it's a treatable condition. a person doesn't need trigger warnings and special treatment to get the benefit of a good education. i figured out how to cope and got my English degree. did the same thing with law school. ended up making a decent place for myself in the world, and it's just gettin started, etc.

talking about needing a policy makes it seem like it's necessary when it's really not at all and totally mischaracterizes the issue which only further stigmatizes it. which makes me think that the people pushing this agenda don't understand what the hell they're talking about. they may understand the concept of ableism, but not trauma.

Applying them one-size-fits-all is taking the ethos of student affairs (where I work btw) and applying it to academics. It's a consequence of how universities have changed in the last 50 years to accommodating the needs of students. Every day I see the schism between colleagues whose background is education or administration and faculty with whom they barely interact, therefore they tend to regard students, implicitly, as clients.

applying them = applying the

is there anything inherent in trigger warnings that leads to censorship? if not, isn't it just a version the sticker on a dvd box?

― james lipton and his francs (darraghmac), Monday, May 19, 2014 1:51 PM (1 hour ago)

yes. unequivocally yes. trigger warnings do not alert us to potentially unpleasant content, content we might wish to avoid for reasons of taste. they alert us to potentially damaging content, content that might actually hurt us. mordy noted this upthread. the idea of "triggering" is tied to the idea of legitimate harm and threat, that people with PTSD need to be actively protected from the things that trigger them, that they in fact have a trumping right to be protected from such things. while no one's talking about truly censoring anything at the moment, this view of triggering gives the triggered enormous discourse-limiting power. it's not government censorship, no, but it can certainly have a chilling effect.

if the material is available to all those who choose to view in then I don't agree with you there.

"being triggered" doesn't damage anyone or anything, only a person can choose to do damage to themselves in regards to how they respond to unpleasant emotions. the worst part of trauma is our concept of what it means as opposed to what it actually did to us. there's totally a way out of it but it takes hard work and serious problem solving skills. that's what these people should be working on, not figuring out what color sticker they should put on a textbook.

i think contendo's got a good point, especially at the college stage where so many crucial intellectual judgments are being formed/re-formed. there are quite a few things i carried mistaken impressions of on past my college years just because they prevented me from ever really finding out in detail what they were all about. surely a rep for being emotionally harmful would have that kind of effect too.

idk there's gonna be a sizeable cohort setting out to collect the lot like it was pokemon iircc

i have to admit im a little surprised (gratified?) people put such stock into, like, "The Awakening" or "The Merchant of Venice" still having some affective power over 19 year olds.

in my experience getting kids to have literally any reaction to "literature" at all is quite a feat.

philosophical question, is 'derp' a reaction or not

counter argument to myself, maybe i'm an outlier, i taught myself how to read, taught myself humanistic ethics and morals via christianity when i was 7 to inoculate myself from some pretty nasty surroundings and actually practiced that shit throughout childhood, blah blah blah. everyone's got a different brain thing going on, i guess i'm not the only voice on this issue. but i still think it's a misguided and potentially harmful idea.

there's a push pull with literature as an elective slash some english as a mandatory slash the ideals of a liberal arts education transforming. i think this was covered upthread already, but.

like there's a notion that it is _important_ for students to experience other perspectives, and to be discomfited, and work through, so to speak, some heavy shit, so that they are inducted into a genuine adulthood with a wider field of vision. and this is supposed to make students uncomfortable, and challenge them, and confront them.

and then there is also the service university which is an expensive summer camp with a nice certificate at the end.

and this stuff is somewhere in between, because precisely it impacts what the "canon" is and what the mandatory lit curriculum shapes up like.

even in high school and jr. high like _tons_ of what we read were all coming of age war novels of some kind (which is actually really weird, and speaks to a great deal about when and why the curriculum was set!).

then you get to college and you're supposed to read all this stuff with emotions and settings and feelings and craft and just dive headlong into the sea of common experience of people of a certain class and social position and aesthetic sensibility and refinement and then you can learn to like things and develop taste (oh god) and you're told this is what grown people read. so if you opt out, what does that say about you? its a violent act. it believes in the power of the word more than the curriculum does, that's for sure!

that's the problem. they're teaching you this because it is supposed to be important. but simultaneously it's not important, it is claimed, in the sense that it can _matter_. and if it _is_ important, and _can_ matter, then you are allowed to say no to it.

its this false debate playacting as though humanities education actually resembles the captain my captain romanticism it occasionally aspires to.

(but that would be even worse, wouldn't it?)

the captain my captain romanticism

I don't get this phrase; as in the spirit of Whitman?

The spirit of Robin Williams, is how I took that.

Great posts Spectrum. The timing of this suggests it has a lot more to do with the current wave of social justice activism than it does with PTSD.

What I find strange is the echoes of the PMRC arguments 25 years ago. I remember most of the left being furious about the stickers and not buying the line that it was just informing people, not censorship, and they were right because the stickers led to records not being stocked in certain stores and the manufacture of clean versions, which are mild forms of censorship. At least the PMRC and MPAA are only concerned about under-18s. I'm uneasy with the idea that universities should be the first bodies to start labelling art for over-18s.

That's a crucial distinction, DL.

ive skimmed, has anybody waltzed in here to say tw: are basically viewer discretion is advised type shit and its rly not a big deal to do this?

ya

ok cool has anyone posted this yet> http://tressiemc.com/2014/03/05/the-trigger-warned-syllabus/

like there's a notion that it is _important_ for students to experience other perspectives, and to be discomfited, and work through, so to speak, some heavy shit, so that they are inducted into a genuine adulthood with a wider field of vision. and this is supposed to make students uncomfortable, and challenge them, and confront them.

But there's another notion endemic in most universities and colleges in the last 15 years that students enduring discomfiting pain must have services available, and professors are no less responsible than administrators for mitigating those painful experiences.

The explicit aim of the original Oberlin guidelines (which may have changed over time) was something along the lines of 'widening access to the classroom for past victims of sexual violence'. The idea that English Lit professors automatically know more about the harsh realities of life than all their students doesn't really stand up.

Also seems a little dishonest for the article linked above to equate this with a previous example of reactionary students complaining about having to think about issues of gender and oppression from a position of privilege.

Would it be nice & thoughtful to include trigger warnings on potentially troubling texts? Sure, of course. That part's easy.

The implications of this discussion, however, quickly get a good deal thornier. Do institutions (such as those of higher learning) have an obligation to provide such warnings on the material from which they teach? If so, what kind of obligation? What should be labeled and how? Whose decision is it? And is the likelihood that one might be triggered a disability? If so, what sort of accommodations should be required?

Taking the line of inquiry a bit further, do those who might be triggered have the authority to police discourse so as to protect themselves from triggers? If so, how so, and to what extent? And is it truly harmful to be triggered? If so, is it then assaultive to expose others to potentially triggering material without providing warnings or heeding their protestation? Etc...

There's an edge of hand-wringing hysteria to all that what-if-ing, but such questions must, I think, extend from a conception of PTSD as a medical condition with vulnerability to triggering its symptom. Especially in a moral climate that attaches special significance, in some cases legal significance, to our sense of having been wronged by the language and ideas of others (not faulting such attachment, btw).

^ goes back to bison an hour ago

There is no blanket obligation to provide warnings. There may be an obligation to engage with a student body that has requested that warnings be put on the agenda but the nature of that dialogue and the expectations it creates going to be different for every institution.

Leaving aside hyperbole about the marketisation of education (and if you're charging tens of thousands of dollars in tuition, idk if the students are the ones instigating that marketisation), there are legitimate questions over whether students should be ignored when they've requested input into classroom and behaviour.

I've not seen much that suggests there's an attempt to police discourse, rather than give an opportunity for students to remove themselves from the situation if they feel they need to without suffering any penalty and having a common-sense approach to whether the graphic materials that you are using in class are necessary.

The example that keeps coming up is a student who felt she wasn't able to leave a screening of a film with a traumatic rape scene because she thought it would draw attention but could have chose not to attend if she had known in advance. Is that hand-wringing?

Of course not. Absolutely nobody itt has called that particular clear-cut example hand-wringing or said that a warning shouldn't have been given.

I mean, no issue seems complicated if you only focus in the most cut-and-dried cases. That's easy.

it seems like everyone agrees that a TW would have been appropriate in the rape scene example. What's concerning to me is the wording of the Oberlin guildlines that objectionable material should be removed from the syllabus if it not of educational value--who is making that judgement, the instructor, the students or the administration? Also, looking again at the guidlines, the scope of what is considered harmful seems to be expanding to include not just traumatic scenes of sexual assault or violence, but a general feeling of racism, sexism, cis-ism that some people see in everything. I'm reminded here of some of the recent online social justice dust-ups in which people who have done something insensitive or offensive are told they have caused "harm"--which seems to take things out the realm of ideas and to treat unwanted ideas as assaults. (I'm also annoyed when libertarians claim that people are forcing them to do things at the point of a gun.)

The video example evidently wasn't clear-cut enough for the teacher to understand that they should have flagged it, in the absence of guidelines telling them that they needed to. That kind of thoughtlessness (or failure to understand that what may be an abstract idea for you isn't going to be for everyone) is why there's a case for things like this. Drawing the line might be challenging but the conversation about what is and isn't appropriate needs to happen.

Oberlin's guidelines are an extreme example and only exist in draft form at the moment.

Also seems a little dishonest for the article linked above to equate this with a previous example of reactionary students complaining about having to think about issues of gender and oppression from a position of privilege.

those complaints are similar to but have to be distinguished from those of their actually-triggered (here's where the criterion for what 'triggering' is has to be put into institutional practice!) counterparts. in that way this is in fact a test case for the trigger-ED project, since they can't exactly just deny students' experiences ('you're calling me a racist just because i'm white! that hurts me!'), especially from an evidently substantial moral/political position, but also don't want to be in the business of determining whose claims to oppression etc as a basis for trigger vulnerability excuse slips are legitimate.

wtf this bullet point from Oberlin:

Try to avoid using graphic language yourself within the trigger warning, but do give students a hint about what might be triggering about the material. If you say something like, “This movie might be upsetting to some of you,” that can a) sound patronizing and b) lead everyone who’s experienced trauma to feel like they might have a terrible time. Try instead saying, “This movie contains scenes of racism, including slurs and even physical violence, but I believe that the movie itself is working to expose and stand against racism and I think it is important to our work here.”

I believe The Birth of a Nation is working to expose and stand against racism and I think it is important to our work here.

'this thing might fuck yall up'

'this bitch really gets it bad in the next chapter, so… watch out'

'Birth of a Nation' is an explicitly racist movie that we are watching because adults can study things that they don't always agree with.

Try to avoid using graphic language yourself within the trigger warning, but do give students a hint about what might be triggering about the material. If you say something like, “This movie might be upsetting to some of you,” that can a) sound patronizing and b) lead everyone who’s experienced trauma to feel like they might have a terrible time. Try instead saying, “This movie contains scenes of racism, including slurs and even physical violence, but I believe that the movie itself is working to expose and stand against racism and I think it is important to our work here.”

― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, May 20, 2014 4:22 PM (7 minutes ago)

this was written by a student, right

You may hesitate to issue a trigger warning, or try to compose a vague trigger warning, because you feel it might also be a “spoiler.” A trigger warning does not need to give everything away. If you’re warning people about the issue of suicide in Things Fall Apart, you can write, “Trigger warning: This book contains a scene of suicide…” You don’t necessarily need to “give away” the plot. However, even if a trigger warning does contain a spoiler, experiencing a trigger is always, always worse than experiencing a spoiler.

the "always, always" really makes me feel like they gave this to a grad student to do

here's the whole thing

http://web.archive.org/web/20131222174936/http:/new.oberlin.edu/office/equity-concerns/sexual-offense-resource-guide/prevention-support-education/support-resources-for-faculty.dot

"educate yourself"!!! ok, i can't

always, like, waaaay worse

you there, in the purple shirt

it is always, always worse to misattribute a gender to someone than it is to call attention to their wardrobe

may i have your permission to direct your body using physical contact with my own?

clear trigger warnings are not reducible to "content warnings" otherwise there would be no controversy. "this is the same as saying 'there's some rough content here', right?" isn't cutting it, as much as it gets repeated. merely giving such a warning is not at issue (well, it is, among people with an investment in harshness...)

two aspects of trigger warnings are meeting skepticism and resistance or "reaction" in political terms: what is proposed to deserve a warning, and what a student is permitted to do once the warning is given.

first, trigger warnings, if put into practice, would institutionalize consideration of things like racism and sexism and other forms of bigotry on the same plane as individual experiences of violence or victimization (war, abuse, etc) that cause PTSD. post-trauma is the model. it insists that politics and psychology are indivisible. conservative and universalist-liberal objections tend to fall here

second, (and things are fuzzier here) students at risk of being triggered will have some kind of avenue or resources to complete the course in an alternate way. disability is the model here: dyslexia, and so on. if a text is so "warned" then pedagogy and the surrounding administration have to provide multiple options. academics, as a class, already have a self-conception as tough-minded and justice-aware people, but aren't exactly inviting of another administrative headache, to put it very generously...

it is always interesting to me that these kinds of controversies always spring up in English departments.

This response is going around.

But learning about these topics are all necessary forms of education. And trigger warnings won’t solve or ameliorate the problems that open, frank, guided discussion by well-trained, competent instructors can. Every semester, I gird up my loins to address the range of defensive and uncomfortable reactions that students have to material they have been taught never to discuss in polite company.

well, what if such an instructor isn't available?

go stand in the fuckin corner

Now go home and get your fuckin shine box

historians will write about how liberal humanism finally collapsed when it was no longer able to effectively distinguish between trigger warnings and spoiler warnings.

one was always, always worse than other, but no one could remember which

schoolchildren will be taught a mnemonic they will call 'the warning warning'

re goole: yeah, that's exactly what i was trying to say-by-asking, but like, clearerer

back to one of mordy's questions iirc, CDC report (haven't found a link yet) says 30% of inner-city children suffer PTSD which makes it harder for them to learn

http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2014/05/16/hood-disease-inner-city-oakland-youth-suffering-from-post-traumatic-stress-disorder-ptsd-crime-violence-shooting-homicide-murder/

but supposedly some people are suggesting it is a more complex form that is going by the unfortunate name 'hood disease'

http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2014/05/inner_city_youth_suffer_from_hood_disease_also_known_as_ptsd.html

and of course that's not a good idea

http://gawker.com/can-we-stop-trying-to-make-hood-disease-a-real-thing-1579145911

I've posted a link before to a study about a high percentage of Native American kids having PTSD, but on phone now and can't find it. Studies are out there.

http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2014/05/what-we-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-trigger-warnings

laurie penny

There is some debate over where precisely the term "trigger warning" entered common parlance. I first encountered it on Livejournal and in related online communties that were sensitive to mental health issues; mental health bloggers in particular used the term to signal that what was about to be discussed or described might be harrowing for those with PTSD. One of the many crucial things that has been missed, deliberately or otherwise, is that "trigger warnings", at least initially, were almost always attached to personal narratives. They became a way to share stories of trauma, anger and extreme experience whilst preserving a space which did not alienate the vulnerable.

In those spaces online, we spoke about rape and abuse, racism and gendered violence, discrimination and frightening mental health experiences, but these discussions were not designed to shock- indeed, part of the point of the discussion was that these things happened so often that they should not be shocking, happened to so many of us that there needed to be a way to talk about them. I honed my own writing in exactly those forums, discursive spaces where the personal and the political were raw and real, and "trigger warnings" were just a part of the shorthand I grew up with - and I may have got this entirely wrong, but I’m not known as a delicate, retiring person who’s reticent about speaking her mind.

http://m.xojane.com/issues/what-we-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-trigger-warnings

jacqui shine

This stigma has persisted. Scholar Joshua S. Goldstein has thoroughly documented the long history of framing traumatized combat vets as emasculated and weak. And though we’ve seen some growth in public attitudes toward trauma and PTSD in military combat veterans, less than half of soldiers with PTSD seek treatment, largely due to fear of stigma--including the fear of being seen as weak and feminized. Likewise, men who survive sexual abuse struggle to reach out for help because they don’t want to seem weak or have their sexuality called into question. Despite the work of feminist physicians and researchers like Judith Herman, whose Trauma and Recovery challenged stigma and advanced evidence-based treatment for PTSD, we still view even trauma itself through a profoundly patriarchal lens.

Our contempt for the trigger warning comes from--what? A fear that people--particularly women--might insist on being fully seen and recognized, even if it’s inconvenient? That we might have to reckon with the pain of others, especially the most incomprehensible varieties of suffering? That sometimes it takes a long time to get better, that sometimes we don’t? That we might have to acknowledge our shared responsibility for a world that is still so profoundly hostile toward women of all genders that, as Dylan Farrow’s recent revelations demonstrate, we categorically refuse to believe survivors?

It may or may not be practicable or advisable to provide trigger warnings in college classrooms. Honestly, I don’t care much either way. What I do care about is the way in which the subject seems to provide a convenient excuse to pathologize and shame survivors. The conversation about trigger warnings is, in every way, a conversation about trauma survivors, and, in a small way, a conversation about what part we each play in creating communities in which all of us can fully participate. If we’re going to have that conversation--and I think it’s an important one!--we need to do it without diminishing or lionizing trauma survivors. Pain, even and especially the pain of trauma, is neither permanently damaging or inherently ennobling. It’s just a part of life. As with most things, we deal with it individually and communally, whether we like it or not.

And you know something? I don’t think that how we as individual survivors manage our struggles every day is the problem here. Let’s stop acting like it is.

agree completely w all that. to the extent i have concerns, it's about the intersection of the moral, social and legal in dealing with the idea of triggering, as framed by ongoing push-pull between bullshit, anti-intellectual constructions like "creepy liberalism" and "illiberal liberalism" (the accusation cast by the thread title as it might be smugly framed from the opposite direction).

more accurate would probably be 'creepy leftism' which makes a lot more sense

or at least more accurate to what the thread is now about. cardamon seems to be describing a different phenomenon in op

feel like shine is making the easy argument there ("we should be aware of and responsive to the varieties of suffering"--well of course!) without making the hard one: should this sort of thing be institutionalized, codified, compulsory?

and if so, what counts and what doesn't? who gets excluded from these protections and why? i feel like if you're not addressing those points you're keeping you're hands clean in the name of an all-inclusiveness which can't really be actualized to any pragmatic end at all. the point being that for TW to be of any use in the university, or to retain any coherence as an idea, some things have to count and some cannot. someone, some modes of suffering, will inevitably be excluded by any such scheme.

well, isn't part of the point of taking on the trauma-theoretic machinery that it allows for the consolidation of distinct, sometimes aligned, sometimes not, liberatory/anti-oppressive political praxes and discourses under one institutional lever / line of rhetorical attack? —with standing recognition (backed by scientific research) of forms of social oppression as the criterion for triggered suffering that counts and triggered suffering that doesn't (aside from, i suppose, the usual individualized medicalized/psychiatrized forms of same).

yeah i think that's absolutely the point of that machinery: it allows you to make those distinctions with some authority. but that machinery surely fails to address what shine writes about: That we might have to reckon with the pain of others, especially the most incomprehensible varieties of suffering?

this is obviously a profound point and i am all for it! but i dont see how it can be reconciled to the trauma-theoretic machinery which enables such decisions as to what counts and doesn't count.

if we didn't call it a "trigger warning" but instead a "some heavy shit warning" would that change the discourse. how.

phrases like "liberatory/anti-oppressive political praxes and discourses" and "standing recognition...of forms of social oppression" are (relatively) tidy and agreeable-sounding, but the social realities they describe are vastly complex and rarely agreed upon by all concerned parties. since it's implicit in what you suggest, j., i'm curious how the pathologization of identity and political relation might play out in legal & institutional practice.

well yes so am i that is why i revived this thread

fair enuf :D

I got a trigger warning
it's full of rocks and stones
and if I lose you
I'll be coming back today
(I got a message for you)

i got a letter from the college the other day
i opened and read it, it said i would suffer
they warned me about a trigger or whatever
picture me giving a damn—i said never

Shine's piece seems fine. It's not xojane's responsibility to frame the implementation (that's a discussion for individual universities and their counsellors / academics / student groups), but journalists can try to ensure that any wider public discussion takes place in good faith and it is useful in that respect.

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/05/empathetically-correct-is-the-new-politically-correct/371442/

I’m not entirely unsympathetic. As an English professor, I had a student—a rape survivor—express feeling traumatized by classroom discussion of Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles. I learned about her difficulty only following her repeated absences from class. A trigger warning might have prevented—or perhaps merely ensured—these absences. But a person traumatized by reading a Victorian novel is a person in need of help, and the entire episode brought about the small crisis which resulted in a more important outcome: getting her connected with a college counselor.

"a person traumatized by reading a Victorian novel is a person in need of help" < otm

express feeling traumatized by classroom discussion

traumatized by reading a Victorian novel

these aren't the same thing

really what we're talking about is not the text itself, it's the discussion of the text in a controlled, semi-public space like a classroom.

with visual materials the sense a little different, but there's this idea out there that words on the page are the triggering thing at issue (they can be)

in that prof's own description, i wonder if it wasn't a classroom of kids blithely talking about rape w/o much insight or sensitivity that was the thing, not slogging thru hardy

ideally it would be on the professor to challenge what the kids are saying then, right? i mean i don't think anyone is calling for a banning on discussing rape or colonialism or whatever in humanities seminars

or at least more accurate to what the thread is now about. cardamon seems to be describing a different phenomenon in op

Yup

The kind of people I was thinking about when I said 'creepy liberals' are, at this very minute, putting links to this story on facebook and talking about the rise of politically correct censorship and et cetera ... and yet one feels that they don't really care very much about literature or trauma victims. For them, Literature Under Threat is just useful as a rhetorical image, and unlike me, they have no interest in exploring the real psychology of triggering and flashbacks.

Update over, carry on. (Some of the most interesting stuff I've read on ILX for a while coming through here.)

IDK I was a lit major in a pretty small department and a small state collegeand I got raped by another lit major. They should've put a trigger warning on him! Haha, not really. But seriously the hardest thing was having to run into him on campus almost every day.

A lot of the books I read could've had trigger warnings, and I wouldn't have wanted them to. Esp the "postmodern" class with stuff like Kathy Acker, Muriel Spark's _The Driver's Seat_, V., }The Passion According to G.H._, a lot of books I've forgotten just made me think "postmodernism = repeated motifs of severe genital injuries/sexual abuse." And, no biggie, because it was so arty and weird. And it might sound silly but I am glad I got to reach this definition of postmodernism ON MY OWN.

The only time it GOT weird was in my <3<3<3ed class on William Blake, when we read "Visions of the Daughters of Albion," which features sort of a No Exit triangle of a husband and wife figure (IIRC) and the wife gets raped by the third guy. She gets upset at her pussy-ass husband who just mopes and does nothing, and upset at the rapist, and also experiences sort of a changing sense of self/sexual liberation because of it (NB: paraphrase). So, that poem was actually really liberating and thrilling, and it was a huge part of me reclaiming my own identity, and probably the first precipitating event towards eventually getting divorced! Just to be overly real here.

ANYWAY, what made it AWFUL was a guy in class who was just insisting over and over that "it had to be a rape, it had to be a rape" to make Oothoon, the main character, sexually liberated. And the prof was trying to deal with it gracefully – "You've been the main voice in this discussion, so you're not going to get to talk anymore so we can hear other voices." But he kept piping up if anyone disagreed. "No! It had to be a rape!" I was feeling self-conscious anyway because the prof known I'd been raped (because she had to get that guy who raped me off the roster the first week of class – I told her about it). And him just repeating it, man!

What I mean to say by all this is boorish people have always been "triggers" for me in a way no piece of literature ever could.

fwiw i don't care very much about literature. don't teach these books, cancel these classes, shut down these departments, and move the funding elsewhere. perhaps something like the ptsd research cardamon apparently does irl. humanities are ridiculously overfunded at a college level anyway, the arts esp. w/ class discussions surely one of the roles of an educator is to instruct in students appropriate kinds of behavior and methods of interaction in a workplace environment. some shmuck like the guy in crabbits class would've been justifiably fired for behavior like that in the real world, and so any prof that didn't deal w/ it or shut it down effectively would be failing that boorish student, other students in that class, the school and society in general.

humanities are ridiculously overfunded at a college level anyway

they're not, at least in Florida. Piddling before, worst now that testing and Kaplan rule the earth.

typically the humanities pay for themselves through enrollments in well-attended service courses and efficient use of their budgetary allotments. it is not uncommon for them to profit while other programs that supposedly subsidize them run at losses.

p sure he's trolling

getting pretty tired of teaching Muriel Spark to bored sophomores tbh

psychiatrist AND comp lit phd sez…

http://chronicle.com/blogs/conversation/2014/05/23/treatment-not-trigger-warnings/

As an assistant professor of German literature at Princeton University, I once taught a class about how Germans understood World War II and the Holocaust in the postwar period. Several weeks into the course, an Orthodox Jewish student came to my office hours to tell me how troubled she was by the material, which she had not realized would be included in the course. She felt that the Holocaust should only be discussed in a sacred context and had avoided taking classes on the topic taught by secular academics. As a theological question, I cannot say whether she made the right choice, but she decided to stay and became one of the most thoughtful participants in the class. Her perspective added greatly to the education of the other students.

Recently, students on campuses across the country have begun asking for “trigger warnings” to be placed on course material that might cause distress or provoke symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The student government at the University of California at Santa Barbara formally called for such warnings to be placed on potentially offensive materials. Oberlin College students drafted a guide for professors that was, for a time, posted on the college’s website (after being criticized by faculty and outsiders alike, the policy is “under revision,” as the site says now). As a psychiatrist and former professor, I am opposed to such proposals.

One of my areas of specialization as a psychiatrist has been the psychiatric consequences of trauma, which can range from nightmares and flashbacks to panic attacks. On my child-psychiatry rotations, I have seen children with severe behavioral problems resulting from abuse and neglect. I have worked with adults who have gone on to become chronically suicidal or self-harming as a result of early abuse. At the VA, I have treated veterans haunted by horrifying acts of war that they experienced or in some cases even took part in.

I have enormous sympathy for students who arrive on college campuses suffering from the aftereffects of childhood trauma as well as for returning veterans trying to go back to school burdened by symptoms of PTSD. These students have often been living with their symptoms for a long time and have come to accept them as normal. They may not be fully aware of the impact symptoms are having on their daily lives, and many of them are certainly not aware that help is available. The late teens and early 20s can be a critical window in the development of symptoms that can impair people for the rest of their lives.

As a psychiatrist, I nonetheless have to question whether trigger warnings are in such students’ best interests. One of the cardinal symptoms of PTSD is avoidance, which can become the most impairing symptom of all. If someone has been so affected by an event in her life that reading a description of a rape in Ovid’s Metamorphoses can trigger nightmares, flashbacks, and panic attacks, she is likely to be functionally impaired in areas of her life well beyond the classroom. The solution is not to help these students dig themselves further into a life of fear and avoidance by allowing them to keep away from upsetting material.

I am also skeptical that labeling sensitive material with trigger warnings will prevent distress. The scientific literature about trauma teaches us that it seeps into people’s lives by networks of association. Someone who has been raped by a man in a yellow shirt at a bus stop may start avoiding not only men, but bus stops and perhaps even anyone wearing yellow. A soldier who has seen a comrade killed by a roadside explosive device may come to avoid not just parked vehicles, but also civilians who look like the people he or she saw right before the device exploded. Since triggers are a contagious phenomenon, there will never be enough trigger warnings to keep up with them. It should not be the job of college educators to foster this process.

It would be much more useful for faculty members and students to be trained how to respond if they are concerned that a student or peer has suffered trauma. Giving members of the college community the tools to guide them to the help they need would be more valuable than trying to insulate them from triggers. Students with unusually intense responses to academic cues should be referred to student-health services, where they can be evaluated and receive evidence-based treatments so that they can participate fully in the life of the university.

One of the most important treatments for PTSD is exposure therapy, which helps patients unlearn the associations between traumatic events and triggers so that they can start functioning again. Narrative therapies also provide exposure by encouraging patients to tell their stories over and over again, allowing them to find a less central place for the event in their personal history so that they can start to rebuild their lives.

One of my biggest concerns about trigger warnings is that they will apply not just to those who have experienced trauma, but to all students, creating an atmosphere in which they are encouraged to believe that there is something dangerous or damaging about discussing difficult aspects of our history. The current DSM specifically excludes exposure to media depicting traumatic events as a cause for PTSD. During my training as a psychiatrist, I have seen how the aftereffects of trauma can destroy lives, but I remain convinced that discussion and debate are among the most important things a college education has to offer.

not trolling! (well...) think alot of the supposed purpose of humanities education at an undergrad level should be happening at a high school level and suspect to an extent alot of it is a scam - sell some kid on accumulating a ton of debt so he or she can devote their lives the next 2-3 years to poetry or the classics w/ the full awareness that there are very few jobs that are going to justify that investment. the grand notions of why you have every student take humanities classes in their core - they discover something about themselves, they discover something about the world, they learn critical thinking skills - i'm very skeptical this happens w/ much regularity. by and large someone who hasn't developed in these ways before they've arrived at college isn't developing in these ways period, the mediocrity has calcified. so the one thing that can be hoped for is training (maybe) and verifying some level of communication skills in reading comprehension, writing, and discussion. i'm not sure traumatizing young ppl suffering from ptsd w/ torture porn is necessary to do that. i'm not sure 'these departments are moneymakers' is enough justification.

I like that reading torture porn of the 18th and 20th centuries helped qualify me to teach budding young humans how to write argumentative essays about cell phones.

by and large someone who hasn't developed in these ways before they've arrived at college isn't developing in these ways period

I know some very old people who are more interesting than is dreamed of in your philosophy

did you come across them in yr research?

balls how far would you say your argument is from questioning a college degree altogether? (not that you'd be out of line to do so)

Nowhere have I ever claimed to do any 'research', the verb I used iirc was 'explore'

College degrees symbolize the sum total of what your parents paid/financial aid provided + years of your toil. By themselves they're worthless except as access to grad schools. I've never seen the point of a business degree.

or journalism and English too

fwiw balls I sense that you are someone who has either experienced PTSD or knows the subject professionally and can see that it's probably very annoying, if that's the case, for you to come across people like me saying things about it

it depends, but (and god i hate that this is something i apparently agree w/ republicans on) i do think that college degree as default norm and necessity for so many entry level or basic management jobs is ridiculous. think a great number of ppl just automatically getting college degrees cuz that's what you do if yr middle class and american could be better served and would better serve society if they went to technical schools or 'learned a trade'. at the same time i would change high school education drastically as well, w/ more humanities there (so the trigger warning dilemma isn't avoided entirely i guess), think you're more likely to reach someone, develop themselves as humans, learn to consider other perspectives, think critically, etc, the social benefits of teaching the humanities, when they're younger but capable than when they're an adult and have generally turned into whatever little shit of a person they're going to be. a strong counter is that a college degree represents years of toil as alfred said as well as the ability and fortitude to finish something you could very easily not finish, to an employer it represents the ability to see something thru and the ability to work. i just think there must be better ways to test and demonstrate that ability.

xp and as I understand it you're in favour of TWs in lit seminars or don't see it as bad thing; if that's the case do you not think everyone else should do TWs as well, not just lit lecturers? Because at the moment it's like, well, the entire rest of the media seems to pump out disturbing stuff quite happily ... and yet with this demand for TWs a big moral obligation is being placed specifically on universities

i don't see tw in classroom setting or even everyday life as a bad thing really. very much in line w/ discussions of privilege or any other recent manifestation of political correctness where yes in practice it could seem ridiculous or coddling or whatever but in principle is just generally 'consider other ppl, treat them w/ respect'. the potential for a chilling effect in terms of the exchange and development of ideas is there i guess, it's generally common sense to not discuss politics or religion in mixed company, etc, but in circumstances where these delicate topics can't be or shouldn't be avoided then all you're enforcing is that they be approached w/ respect and a kind of seriousness w/ respect and seriousness incentivised by the enforcement of this code, and bullying or various sorts incentivised by its absence cuz bullying really really works. obv this is something i generally agree w/ more in principle than actually apply in practice.

x-post universities are the only places that are even going entertain such a thing at present

it's generally common sense to not discuss politics or religion in mixed company,

lol what is this 1950?

let's not offend the womenfolk w/ talk of politics

Oberlin College students drafted a guide for professors that was, for a time, posted on the college’s website

just wanna otm myself for a minute

The value of having lit departments at the college level (or any level) is mainly to reflect some social prestige onto literature, so it doesn't sink out of sight entirely. As long as there's a sense in society that this lit stuff is worth something, then a sufficient number of readers who will love it will find it and read it. In the process hundreds of thousands of college freshmen and sophomores will become bored and fidgety and vaguely resentful about "being forced to bullshit" their way through their lit courses. It's a sacrifice, but one that must be made!

^ I was responding to:

fwiw i don't care very much about literature. don't teach these books, cancel these classes, shut down these departments

College is also a good time to make friends, have sex with different kinds of people, and experiment with drugs. Most of my time at college was spent unproductively and it was criminally expensive but I don't know where I'd be without it. I also read a bunch of great books and was exposed to ideas that transformed the way I think about things. I see how the ritual or going through college can seem arbitrary or silly but it's extremely depressing to me to see it measured solely in terms of its value as vocational training. I think all 18-22 yr olds should have the luxury of goofing off, learning, and discovering themselves but maybe that's unrealistic. In any case the trigger warning debate is good because it's causing people off and on campuses to re-examine the purpose of the humanities and that's usually a stimulating convo, esp for young people who haven't thought about this before.

balls and iatee using the same syllabus

this is a subject that's near and dear to me. for the last 9 years i've worked in the disability services dept of a community college, where my role is to attend classes with deaf/hard of hearing students and transcribe the class for them in real-time. at this point i've probably spent a semester in at least one class of every discipline we offer, including the trades.

now, i totally run in tumblr sjw circles, so i'm very pro-trigger warnings as a concept. but the worst of the potentially triggering stuff i've encountered wouldn't be resolved by trigger warnings, because it comes from other students during class discussions, like crabbits mentioned. one instructor i encountered was very shy and had a hard time maintaining control of the class, so discussions would often devolve into the brashest students making their best newspaper-comments-section remarks unchallenged. i've also seen instructors bring up potentially triggering stuff in the middle of topics you'd think were unrelated: a science teacher making an off-the-cuff comment about rape, a reading teacher assigning an article about health and then making fat-shaming remarks during the discussion, etc. i think that kind of stuff is shitty, but i don't think trigger warnings will address it.

otoh, my work in disability services makes me VERY skeptical about remarks like "if you're too fragile to handle it, maybe college isn't for you" or "the real world won't coddle you, so toughen up." they play into the pervasive idea that environments are immutable, when it's entirely reasonable to make changes to an environment that is not serving the lived reality of the community.

College is also a good time to make friends, have sex with different kinds of people, and experiment with drugs.

― Treeship, Friday, May 23, 2014 9:49 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i understand there are other ways to do this

getting married?

What I mean to say by all this is boorish people have always been "triggers" for me in a way no piece of literature ever could.

― just like the one wing dove (Crabbits), Friday, May 23, 2014 2:47 PM (6 hours ago)

my work in disability services makes me VERY skeptical about remarks like "if you're too fragile to handle it, maybe college isn't for you" or "the real world won't coddle you, so toughen up." they play into the pervasive idea that environments are immutable, when it's entirely reasonable to make changes to an environment that is not serving the lived reality of the community.

― funny unconscious rocks creating your consciousness with free choice (reddening), Friday, May 23, 2014 7:32 PM (1 hour ago)

The kind of people I was thinking about when I said 'creepy liberals' are, at this very minute, putting links to this story on facebook and talking about the rise of politically correct censorship and et cetera ... and yet one feels that they don't really care very much about literature or trauma victims. For them, Literature Under Threat is just useful as a rhetorical image, and unlike me, they have no interest in exploring the real psychology of triggering and flashbacks.

― cardamon, Friday, May 23, 2014 1:46 PM (8 hours ago)

i don't think most itt are treating the issue in so aggressively black & white a fashion...the question, as i see it, is more like "what changes, and under what circumstances, and on whose authority?" the details.

one interesting thing i've learned from working in disability services is the distinction between the "medical model" of disability and the "social model." the medical model is the traditional way: student goes to a doctor, comes to us with a note of diagnosis, and we provide accommodations. the "social model," which my department promotes, is an attempt to make certain accommodations a normal professional expectation among all instructors: captioned videos, powerpoint slides made available online, that sort of thing. that way students who struggle with undiagnosed disabilities or students who don't want to disclose their disabilities are able to benefit as well. it's a way of saying "students with disabilities are normal, expected participants in the college community, and everyone's work practices should reflect that."

this argument over trigger warnings feels really similar. in the social model, you'd make up a list of triggers and say "let's accommodate everyone's sensitivities generally." not a lot of people are going for that idea, so i'd think the next proposal would be the medical model, where trigger-related accommodations are reserved for people who have doctor-diagnosed issues with trauma/ptsd. but (and here's where my bit of stridency upthread comes in) a non-trivial number of instructors are just not cool with the idea that they need to change anything about their work practices, period. it's like pulling fuckin' teeth just to get some of them to accommodate bone-obvious disabilities like hearing or vision loss. so i tend to be suspicious of appeals to tradition or "principled stands" in this kind of argument, as i think it's often just another way of saying "i find it a hassle to change." but this probably has less to do with the discussion itt than it does with my experience "on the ground" or w/e.

anyway my presence in the classroom already has a chilling effect on the instructor's free speech, namely their desire to spend half an hour of class watching uncaptioned YouTube videos.

In the old culture war, we were supposed to read Ovid. We were supposed to read the "classics". I suppose I should dig up citations, but part of the original conservative beef was that "modern" lit with its bad language was preferred to the classics. Now we're supposed to have shocking, offensive lit with lots of violence.

my work in disability services makes me VERY skeptical about remarks like "if you're too fragile to handle it, maybe college isn't for you" or "the real world won't coddle you, so toughen up." they play into the pervasive idea that environments are immutable, when it's entirely reasonable to make changes to an environment that is not serving the lived reality of the community.

And they also assume that accommodating people is the same as 'coddling' them, that there is no legitimate sensitivity, only 'over-sensitivity', etc ...

x-post the Classics probably need TWs as well, what with all that child murder and incest leading to eye-gouging.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2014/05/trigger-warnings-and-the-novelists-mind.html

i didn't find this post particularly interesting ("trigger warnings are dumb. but maybe they're useful! alas, i am a writer"), but for the sake of completism, here's jay caspian kang's take

curious how it's possible to even think yr engaging w lolita if you're not keeping in mind it describes the systematic rape of a young girl

My professor’s pronouncement felt too didactic, too political, and, although I tried to put it out of my mind and enjoy “Lolita” ’s cunning, surprising games with language, I could no longer pick up the book without feeling the weight of his judgment.

like this sentiment is so bonkers-dumb as to actually be evil

maybe the weight you were feeling was THE BOOK

years of staring rapt at the alliteration in "to tap at three on the teeth" and here comes this political asshole with his personal-experience-polluting claptrap about the "plot"

no i think what he's saying is that to be an artiste is to slip the bonds of mooing humanity

'every word matters'

"tried to put it out of my mind"!!!

curious how it's possible to even think yr engaging w lolita if you're not keeping in mind it describes the systematic rape of a young girl

Yeah, I find I'm always almost getting drawn into Humbert's self-pitying schtick and then something doesn't feel right and then I remember - argh fuck this narrator is a lying rapist

I thought that's what Nabokov was trying to do with the novel, really?

humbert trying to seduce you, the conspiratorial way you laugh at charlotte together, the coy self-identifications as a "murderer" (meaning quilty, but, really, especially since you read the prologue first, meaning lolita), the way the part of the first paragraph people leave out explicitly frames the entire book (except the prologue) as a defense in a celestial trial--a defense of what? what is tangling the thorns? what are the rotting monsters behind the slow boyish smile? forget politically correct, none of this stuff is even aesthetically pleasurable, nor (when it comes to all the beautiful odes to humbert's covetous kind of love) provocative, if you forget you're being smoothtalked by a rapist. that's the book.

i mean "as" aesthetically pleasurable. obv the prose is very nice.

well, horror stories provide their own aesthetic pleasures. and yeah, it's easy enough to get caught up in the language and wit for their own sake.

but it's not a horror story if you don't wanna think abt the rape

in the social model, you'd make up a list of triggers and say "let's accommodate everyone's sensitivities generally." not a lot of people are going for that idea, so i'd think the next proposal would be the medical model, where trigger-related accommodations are reserved for people who have doctor-diagnosed issues with trauma/ptsd. but (and here's where my bit of stridency upthread comes in) a non-trivial number of instructors are just not cool with the idea that they need to change anything about their work practices, period. ... so i tend to be suspicious of appeals to tradition or "principled stands" in this kind of argument, as i think it's often just another way of saying "i find it a hassle to change."

― funny unconscious rocks creating your consciousness with free choice (reddening), Saturday, May 24, 2014 5:36 AM (12 hours ago)

xp, gotcha

http://bullybloggers.wordpress.com/2014/07/05/you-are-triggering-me-the-neo-liberal-rhetoric-of-harm-danger-and-trauma/

Fifteen to twenty years ago, books like Wendy Brown’s States of Injury (1995) and Anna Cheng’s The Melancholy of Race: Psychoanalysis, Assimilation and Hidden Grief (2001) asked readers to think about how grievances become grief, how politics comes to demand injury and how a neoliberal rhetoric of individual pain obscures the violent sources of social inequity. But, newer generations of queers seem only to have heard part of this story and instead of recognizing that neoliberalism precisely goes to work by psychologizing political difference, individualizing structural exclusions and mystifying political change, some recent activists seem to have equated social activism with descriptive statements about individual harm and psychic pain. Let me be clear – saying that you feel harmed by another queer person’s use of a reclaimed word like tranny and organizing against the use of that word is NOT social activism. It is censorship.

Let’s call an end to the finger snapping moralism, let’s question contemporary desires for immediately consumable messages of progress, development and access; let’s all take a hard long look at the privileges that often prop up public performances of grief and outrage; let’s acknowledge that being queer no longer automatically means being brutalized and let’s argue for much more situated claims to marginalization, trauma and violence.

there should be a [...] in between those 2 paragraphs

What does it mean when younger people who are benefitting from several generations now of queer social activism by people in their 40s and 50s (who in their childhoods had no recourse to anti-bullying campaigns or social services or multiple representations of other queer people building lives) feel abused, traumatized, abandoned, misrecognized, beaten, bashed and damaged? These younger folks, with their gay-straight alliances, their supportive parents and their new right to marry regularly issue calls for “safe space.” However, as Christina
Hanhardt’s Lambda Literary award winning book, Safe Space: Neighborhood History and the Politics of Violence, shows, the safe space agenda has worked in tandem with urban initiatives to increase the policing of poor neighborhoods and the gentrification of others. Safe Space: Gay Neighborhood History and the Politics of Violence traces the development of LGBT politics in the US from 1965-2005 and explains how LGBT activism was transformed from a multi-racial coalitional grassroots movement with strong ties to anti-poverty groups and anti-racism organizations to a mainstream, anti-violence movement with aspirations for state recognition.

And, as LGBT communities make “safety” into a top priority (and that during an era of militaristic investment in security regimes) and ground their quest for safety in competitive narratives about trauma, the fight against aggressive new forms of exploitation, global capitalism and corrupt political systems falls by the way side.

Is this the way the world ends? When groups that share common cause, utopian dreams and a joined mission find fault with each other instead of tearing down the banks and the bankers, the politicians and the parliaments, the university presidents and the CEOs? Instead of realizing, as Moten and Hearny put it in The Undercommons, that “we owe each other everything,” we enact punishments on one another and stalk away from projects that should unite us, and huddle in small groups feeling erotically bonded through our self-righteousness.

“Neoliberal rhetoric, with its foundational emphasis upon individual freedoms, has the power to split off libertarianism, identity politics, multi-culturalism, and eventually narcissistic consumerism from the social forces ranged in pursuit of social justice through the conquest of state power. It has long proved extremely difficult within the US left, for example, to forge the collective discipline required for political action to achieve social justice without offending the desire of political actors for individual freedom and for full recognition and expression of particular identities. Neoliberalism did not create these distinctions, but it could easily exploit, if not foment, them.” David Harvey's Brief History of Neoliberalism

http://nataliacecire.blogspot.com/2014/07/on-neoliberal-rhetoric-of-harm.html

There's another strain to Halberstam's polemic that pits professors against students on generational terms. Here is one generation who fought hard for queer rights; who never had a Gay/Straight Alliance in high school or a way to grow up both queer and normal. Who made careers out of queer studies while they watched their administrations professionalize and their faculties casualize, who teach at universities that cost $44,000 a year to attend.

A representative of this generation calls another a bunch of babies. (So they are: their infantilization has been enforced by the privatization of public goods, by debt, and by the destruction of good jobs. Reaching puberty earlier and earlier, likely due to environmental factors, they achieve financial independence later and later, if ever. All their own fault, no doubt.)

Halberstam kind of makes a big deal of this generational gap, pointing to the "friendly adults" who erroneously install "narratives of damage that they [the youth] themselves may or may not have actually experienced." It's as if young people are stealing an earlier generation's trauma, claiming it as their own when really they have it so good. In this bizarrely counterfactual linear temporality, the past is not only past but also dead, and you do not have the right to be traumatized by historical memory, only by things that have literally happened to you—even if you are eighteen and it's all—all—news to you. We (the older generation) were there, and are over it, and so you (the younger generation) should root yourselves entirely in the ameliorated present* and get over it, because it is over.

The result is an odd polemic against coddled millenials and their too-sensitive feelings, as if it were somehow ridiculous to be young and too sensitive, or for that matter, old and too sensitive. This cross-generational call to "get over it" is an example of what Sara Ahmed has called "overing": "In assuming that we are over certain kinds of critique, they create the impression that we are over what is being critiqued." It's particularly perverse to demand that young people be "over it," when they have perhaps only just left their parents' homes, and have perhaps only recently come to any political consciousness at all. There's a very good reason college students aren't "over it"; they just got there. Have you met a college student? It's all, all new.

It is its own kind of shock to learn about how you have been historically, rather than personally, hated. It is not about "trauma" but about developing a political consciousness that is also historical, a fundamentally utopian impulse to exist in solidarity with the dead. There is, to be sure, a fine line between identifying with the past and appropriating it, but I think we can allow our students some leeway in figuring out where this line is, and not getting it right every time. Certainly grown-ups need the same leeway.

halberstam thing was so snide and shakily written but i guess i'm not surprised it made waves nor that it would turn up here

look, para 3, a primer on what humor is using monty python as an example, yeah

Couldn't get to grips with the halberstam thing beyond - 'The effect this text has on you, triggering you, is important but is still fixed on you, what about the wider community - if we fix things so that you always get a trigger warning, we could do that and still live in a world of gross inequality and suffering' - am I right, was that what he was saying?

caught some of this on the radio this morning:

“Freedom from Speech”: Speech Issues on College Campus
August 19, 2014

Hour One

Guests: Tim Burke and Greg Lukianoff

Over the past year, students at several colleges have called for “trigger warnings” to be added to syllabi to warn of potentially traumatic material. Also, there have been calls for higher scrutiny of “microaggressions” – subtle prejudices – that are used in everyday language. Additionally, several commencement speakers have had their invitations revoked because of protests from students and faculty members. In this hour of Radio Times, we’ll examine topics related to speech on college campuses with TIM BURKE, professor of history at Swarthmore College and author of the “Easily Distracted” blog, and GREG LUKIANOFF, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE).

Lukianoff has a book out called 'Freedom from Speech': "Lukianoff analyzes numerous examples of the growing desire for "intellectual comfort," such as the rise of speech restrictions around the globe and the increasing media obsession of punishing "offensive" utterances, jokes, or opinions inside the United States. To provide a preview of where we may be headed, Lukianoff points to American college campuses where speakers are routinely disinvited for their opinions, where students increasingly demand "trigger warnings" for even classics like The Great Gatsby, and where students are told they cannot hand out even copies of the Constitution outside of "free speech zones." Lukianoff explains how increasingly global populations are arguing not for freedom of speech, but, rather, freedom from speech."

Long-term, and I know this sounds facetious but, I wonder if 'people who don't like having to negotiate systems of trigger warnings and sensitivities' are going to become one of those groups whose sensitivities are catered for in a system of trigger warnings and accommodations?

Will gladly defer to people who know more, but for example, wouldn't people who have autistic spectrum disorders really struggle in a system that penalised you for not providing trigger warnings?

I think it makes sense that people want freedom from speech now, and that this wasn't an issue in the past. With screens everywhere you turn, we are bombarded with so. much. information. and lots of people fantasize about dropping out altogether. I think it is in this environment that people have come to view information as assault. Even I, with my frenetic, hummingbirdlike mind want to slow stuff down from time to time, and take more active control over my information environment by cutting stuff out.

I know trigger warnings don't directly address this problem, but I think they speak to an anxiety that comes from living in the modern information environment.

xxxp you mean like "Trigger warning: Trigger warnings"?

good point, treeship. information overload has to be a factor here. also proximity.

one of the big questions for the 21st century, imo = how do non-homogeneous societies manage themselves, given ever-increasing population density, travel & communication opportunities, and access to a tidal wave of unfiltered information? one obvious answer = redefine social permissions so as to restrict things that might exacerbate tensions between groups. there's no nice, simple, ideologically "pure" defense for such an approach, at least none comparable to "all people should be free to say whatever they want," but it does make a certain kind of pragmatic sense.

for the record, i'm not advocating legislative speech restriction in the name of peace 'n' harmony, but i can easily see why less formally codified social rules might shift in that direction, things being what they are.

I think consent is important here ^

An agreement between people not to cross each other's lines just feels so different to an order coming down from above that you and they must not cross each other's lines

yeah, absolutely. but any shift even in loose social permissions will generate the sense among some that they're being unfairly restricted, even oppressed (e.g. conservative grousing about "political correctness").

also, the two things - social and legislative permissions - aren't so clearly distinct. when a society collectively demands something, it will rarely limits itself to non-legislative means of obtaining it. today's common agreements will likely form the foundation for tomorrow's laws.

"...it will rarely limits itself..."

i haven't been following this case too closely, of the newly hired uiuc prof whose job was retracted (against custom, and against the hiring department, by the higher-ups) because of his pro-palestine/anti-israel tweeting. consensus seems to have been pretty strongly with him and against the school, since the retraction seems to provide good grounds for an academic-freedom suit, and although the prof's employment hadn't been formally approved yet (so technically ok to retract?), no prof's employment customarily IS before they start their new jobs and move to new cities and begin teaching, so a retraction of this scale has a 'chilling effect'.

but ppl have been waiting for the school to justify themselves. here's the chancellor:

http://illinois.edu/blog/view/1109/115906

A pre-eminent university must always be a home for difficult discussions and for the teaching of diverse ideas. One of our core missions is to welcome and encourage differing perspectives. Robust – and even intense and provocative – debate and disagreement are deeply valued and critical to the success of our university.

As a university community, we also are committed to creating a welcoming environment for faculty and students alike to explore the most difficult, contentious and complex issues facing our society today. Our Inclusive Illinois initiative is based on the premise that education is a process that starts with our collective willingness to search for answers together – learning from each other in a respectful way that supports a diversity of worldviews, histories and cultural knowledge.

The decision regarding Prof. Salaita was not influenced in any way by his positions on the conflict in the Middle East nor his criticism of Israel. Our university is home to a wide diversity of opinions on issues of politics and foreign policy. Some of our faculty are critical of Israel, while others are strong supporters. These debates make us stronger as an institution and force advocates of all viewpoints to confront the arguments and perspectives offered by others. We are a university built on precisely this type of dialogue, discourse and debate.

What we cannot and will not tolerate at the University of Illinois are personal and disrespectful words or actions that demean and abuse either viewpoints themselves or those who express them. We have a particular duty to our students to ensure that they live in a community of scholarship that challenges their assumptions about the world but that also respects their rights as individuals.

As chancellor, it is my responsibility to ensure that all perspectives are welcome and that our discourse, regardless of subject matter or viewpoint, allows new concepts and differing points of view to be discussed in and outside the classroom in a scholarly, civil and productive manner.

A Jewish student, a Palestinian student, or any student of any faith or background must feel confident that personal views can be expressed and that philosophical disagreements with a faculty member can be debated in a civil, thoughtful and mutually respectful manner. Most important, every student must know that every instructor recognizes and values that student as a human being. If we have lost that, we have lost much more than our standing as a world-class institution of higher education.

good response from t burke

http://blogs.swarthmore.edu/burke/blog/2014/08/22/on-the-salaita-decision/

yes this is...relevant to my...interests

uggggggh

I am not troubled by the idea that an acceptance of all students as they come to you is an important professional standard. I would go even further than you do in your statement and suggest that persistent inability to accept and respectfully work with students and colleagues with many diverse views is not just a legitimate weight on hiring but should govern whether someone retains tenure. But you must not measure adherence to this standard by reading what scholars or intellectuals say or write in the public sphere, whether in formal publication or in social media.

Hmm, but if you can't use that to gauge what somebody's going to be like as a teacher, what can you use? Which question is sort of answered by this:

The proof is in the pudding: in how a professor teaches, in how they participate in the professional evaluation of other scholars, in how they execute their administrative duties. There are innumerable examples of faculty in the last fifty years whose intensely expressed public views had no impact on the professionalism of their work with students and colleagues.

Sort of answered.

But basing it on how they behave in class with students requires you to hire them first

FIRE are really creepy even tho they occasionally seem to come down on the right side of some things. on the whole they feel like some astroturfed koch/reason operation

http://jewishphilosophyplace.wordpress.com/2014/08/26/steven-salaita-uncivil-speech-obnoxious-speech-abusive-speech/

If anyone wrote this way about or addressed Muslims, Arabs, or Palestinians, vilifying broad sectors of an entire community for its political commitments, he would have found his head on a platter, and rightly so.

Worth quoting this recent LGM blog post in nearly its entirety, as it bears directly on this little bit of sophistry:

You will be unsurprised that Glenn Reynolds has no problem with academics being fired for the political content of their Twitter feeds:

A FACULTY CANDIDATE WHO TALKED ABOUT BLACK PEOPLE THIS WAY WOULD BE UNEMPLOYABLE ANYWHERE. SAY IT ABOUT JEWS, THOUGH, AND IT’S CONTROVERSIAL. “Yet ad hominem attacks are also a BDS strategy that serves to silence opponents. Many faculty who believe the university made the right decision about Salaita are now unwilling to say so publicly.” BDS people have made clear by their actions that they are nasty antisemites who deserve no respect.

First of all, let us once again dispense with the silly idea that Salaitia was a mere “candidate,” despite having agreed to an offer and been scheduled to teach classes. By this logic, he could have been teaching for a month and not been hired. The trustee approval is pro forma; he was treated by the university as an employee, which he was. The idea that he wasn’t fired is such vacuous formalism it would embarrass proponents of the Hilbig litigation. He was fired.

So let’s consider another hypothetical. What if someone said “something like that” about, say, Palestinians? I happen to have a test case handy:

Dean Obeidallah @Deanofcomedy
.@instapundit I applaud ur honesty in cheering the death of Palestinian children.

Instapundit.com @instapundit
Follow
@Deanofcomedy If Palestinians acted civilized, no one would die. You are a mouthpiece for bloodthirsty savages.

Note here that Reynolds isn’t talking about Hamas, or Palestinian terrorists; he’s talking about Palestinans as a group. The evidence alleging anti-Semitism in Salaita’s tweets is far more ambiguous. (Indeed, I don’t think they constitute evidence that Salaita is anti-Semitic at all, although some of the tweets are hateful and indefensible even if they are not anti-Semitic.) It is being asserted that Salaita retweeting a tweet saying that a reporter’s story — not the reporter, the story — should have ended at the “point of a shiv” is a firable offense. Reynolds has called for the literal, not metaphorical, murder of Iranian nuclear scientists.

My position at the time of the latter incident is that Reynolds could not be fired for his statements based on the principles of academic freedom, and that applies to his new disgusting tweets as well. Reynolds himself, however, is happy to benefit from these protections but does not want them extended to people he disagrees with, which is a disgrace.

That does not really bear on the link I posted at all.

Of course it does. You can regularly find academics saying that and worse about Palestinians and Muslims all over Twitter and other outlets, every day, which puts the lie to the handwringing about "If anyone wrote this way about or addressed Muslims, Arabs, or Palestinians, vilifying broad sectors of an entire community for its political commitments, he would have found his head on a platter, and rightly so" and all the surmising about separating someone's social media activity from who they are as a person.

(The use of "head on a platter" is particularly funny for LGM-related reasons as well.)

Glenn Reynolds is a very controversial figure who has received tons and tons of disapprobation. He has also, as far as I can tell, never said anything as damning as blaming Jews for anti-semitism (where he does not just make a generality about a group of people, but actively and directly promotes bigotry). If you can locate some reputable academics who have publicly approved of, eg, Islamophobia, I think you'd have a stronger case.

"very controversial figure"? he teaches law at tennessee, has a column in USA today. he's about as reputable as it gets for a conservative public intellectual

I guess my experience of him is colored by only ever reading about him on ILX and Crooked Timber, lol. (Didn't Glenn Greenwald used to tee off on him regularly when he was writing for Salon?)

ha, google//site:salon.com greenwald reynolds
About 212 results (0.18 seconds)

He has also, as far as I can tell, never said anything as damning as blaming Jews for anti-semitism

He just referred to every Palestinian as "bloodthirsty savages." And he doesn't just "teach law," he is a tenured senior faculty member.

blaming Jews for anti-semitism

This, of course, is not what Salaida did, unless we're going to go over the "'Zionist' does/does not mean the same as 'Jew' PICK ONE" thing again.

I don't have the details of the exact tweet but I recall reading something like "Israel makes antisemitism respectable."

Also does Dawkins still count as a "reputable academic?"

wait, so your proof that other ppl wouldn't similarly be fired/contract unapproved is from a guy with tenure?

he runs pjmedia, writes books that get reviewed outside the rightwing pastemill ghetto. he ain't drudge but he's a big deal

this isn't to excuse salaita's antisemitism (if that's what he is, i haven't looked into it myself tbh). it should not even be questionable to state that open hatred of palestinians and muslims generally can be done w/o much sanction on the right, and therefore treated as alien and controversial (at best) by the mainstream

xps

I happen to have Marshall McLuhan right here! The tweet in question read: Zionists: transforming ‘anti-Semitism’ from something horrible into something honorable since 1948.

xxp Let's ask Ward Churchill just how much protection tenure revokes when the right wing gets its panties in a knot, shall we?

*tenure provides

http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2014/08/a-very-letter-to-chancellor-wise-from-the-eminent-historian-natalie-zemon-davis.html

golly she sure is good

i don't have time to fully investigate the articles he links to here but this seems relevant to what we were discussing above re double standards:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/09/03/steven-salaita-more-than-just-an-obnoxious-tweeter/

But a lot of people are using him as an example of how academics with pro-Palestinian or “anti-Zionist” views are punished in American universities. This is laughable. For every Steve Salaita, there are a larger number of people interested in Middle East Studies who get rejected for academic jobs, or decline to go into academia to begin with, because they have pro-Israel views. As I noted several years back, top universities have found it necessary to create special “Israel Studies” programs and chairs because Departments of Middle Eastern Studies are so closed to anyone who wants to do objective, much less sympathetic, scholarship on Israel. That final link goes to a story about what passes for debate at the Middle East Studies Association: “Should we boycott all Israeli goods, products, services, and people, or should we exempt academics?” The vast majority of those who are agitating for Salaita on the grounds that political views shouldn’t affect academic appointments don’t care at all that MES programs are so one-sidedly hostile to Israel, and hire accordingly.

no, we're agitating b/c of faculty governance; i.e. it shouldn't matter what rich people who happen to have been named to the board of trustees think about an appointment

i'm not sure why someone who apparently exclusively writes about palestine/israel would be getting a tenure job in a native american studies program tbh, and this article suggests his scholarship is not so fantastic either. someone said early on that this makes the perfect 'freedom of speech' in academia case bc of how much salaita fails on every other merit.

because decolonialization

"fails on every other merit" : maybe you should be consulted on every faculty hire! would save us a lot of work. congrats on tenure btw

http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&page=1&rh=n%3A283155%2Cp_27%3ASteven%20Salaita

he fails on the merit 'actually seems to be a scholar in the field'

lol, what is "the field". like I don't have a clue what people in area studies do but I don't presume to judge its boundaries. I mean right wingers hate area studies generally so I get what's going on here

U of I actually has a Middle Eastern Studies dpt - I was scanning through the faculty and I've actually read some of Pitard's work on the Ugaritic Baal Cycle. I wonder why he didn't try to work in the actual department that fits his area of expertise.

don't force boundaries on him man

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLoYFvbR0XY

bc that unit didn't have a line?

are arab americans americans? looks like that's who half of his books are about

idk how U of I works but i'd be surprised by any institution i've been involved w/ giving someone a spot in an unrelated department bc the correct department is filled up - it's pretty bizarre.

arab americans are not native americans

lol mordy I like you but you have no clue here

idk i have experience w/ a variety of NYC universities and departments so i'm not coming from complete ignorance. obv you feel it's not strange tho. i guess you've seen stuff like this before?

like, i have known ppl doing stuff in like German + French language departments that weren't German or French, but they always had theoretical basis in those languages. i've never seen someone literally doing another department in the wrong place.

like to lay it out: a unit gets a line, it advertises, it gets applicants, it chooses among those. they decide who "fits". they can't just send an applicant to another unit. in this case they judged fitness.

oh lol i missed that whole angle on this

maybe it's a ward churchill honorarium kind of thing

as in my eye missed the 'native' american part of all these articles

he has a book exploring parallels bw Native American and Palestinian issues. that's the basis for their judgment of fit

feels like they might have been able to find someone else who cared a little more about native american issues, somewhere in america

guess they didn't! maybe you should talk to them about it

did they post on craiglist that seems to be a good place to post jobs

you would know

feel like if I were someone really invested in illinois supporting its university system I wouldn't be so sad that tax dollars aren't going to the guy writing for electronicintifada.net, like gee, why are conservatives so bitter about area studies hmmm

again, you would know

http://utotherescue.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-order-of-civility.html

on the uc berkeley chancellor's civility/free speech statement, for the 50th anniversary of the free speech movement

"The demand for civility effectively outlaws a range of intellectual, literary, and political forms: satire is not civil, caricature is not civil, hyperbole and aesthetic mockery are not civil nor is polemic. Ultimately the call for civility is a demand that you not express anger; and if it was enforced it would suggest that there is nothing to be angry about in the world. The call for civility in discourse confuses the enforcement of administrative time, place, and manner restrictions with the genuine need to defend people from personal threat. The result is that the administrative desire trumps all else."

two very different threads there IMO and not entirely consistent with, for instance, how this discussion often plays out on ilx

in the case of the U of I "administrative time, place, and manner" includes flattering big donors, so indeed there are three different threads therein (as Chancellor Dirks no doubt intends to obscure)

well we do have mordy

i don't feel sufficiently flattered

fwiw i thought the contractual arguments for hiring salaita were strong enough that they should've reinstated him, but i'm still pretty pumped about the news that they voted him down

http://legalinsurrection.com/2014/09/u-illinois-board-of-trustees-votes-down-steven-salaita/

a victory for rich people, good job

except the boycotts suck and the u will lose the lawsuit

yay

i'm sure rich ppl all over the world are celebrating the news

legalinsurrection

I'm sure rich people are always celebrating. They're rich! This is just icing on the cake (albeit icing that will cost the Illinois taxpayer a lot). But hey! Civility! It's worth it!

http://linchpin.ca/?q=content%2Fallies-these-reflections-privilege-reductionism

http://utotherescue.blogspot.com/2014/10/free-speech-is-not-for-feeling-safe.html

wendy brown of uc berkeley

this will probably be great - loads of v smart ppl:
http://www.csgsnyu.org/2014/09/october-14-taking-offense-trigger-warnings-the-neoliberal-politics-of-endangerment/

I'm going to have to bookmark that for my debate class. There's a resolution of whether or not govt restrictions on threatening speech are desirable.

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/police-637732-council-meeting.html

SANTA ANA – Mayor Miguel Pulido canceled Tuesday night’s Santa Ana City Council meeting after a man in attendance refused to remove a cap with an anti-police expletive on it.

The chambers were filled as the City Council was scheduled to discuss a proposed homeless shelter, as well as meeting decorum rules after anti-police demonstrators interrupted a Sept. 2 council meeting in which police officers were being honored.

The man, who would not disclose his full name and only went by “Bijan,” was first approached by City Manager David Cavazos while he was sitting, waiting for the meeting to start. “He told me that he was going to give me the option to take it off. He didn’t ask me to take it off immediately when he was speaking to me,” Bijan said.

Bijan said he’s part of a group, CopWatch Santa Ana, and was arrested last week while he was filming police activity.

“I came here to talk about the police abuse that I’ve experienced with the Santa Ana Police Department,” he said. “I don’t feel like I have to take this off in this City Council meeting. It’s a meeting for the public and I’m allowed to be here with my hat.”

Pulido said he found the hat offensive and soon after, the public was asked to leave the City Council chambers because “we didn’t want to get into a big debate with a room full of people,” Santa Ana Police Chief Carlos Rojas said. He said police wanted the room isolated “in order to deal with the problem, whether it would lead to an arrest or not.”

Most left, but about 20 chose to remain inside.

“Start the meeting!” a woman shouted.

“You’re silencing people for a hat,” one man said.

Expletives in Spanish and English were thrown at the mayor.

Santa Ana police told attendees who chose to remain inside the council chambers that they risked being arrested if they did not leave.

Albert Castillo with Chicanos Unidos chose to stay and asked the mayor: “Explain to us, what actually are we doing wrong by sitting here? Just tell us what we’re doing wrong.”

At one point, demonstrators argued with Councilwoman Michele Martinez, who was surrounded by police officers, as she asked the man to take off his hat.

“Why don’t you just be respectful and take off your hat and we can resume the meeting. That’s all we’re asking,” Martinez said. “It’s disrespectful to the chambers. It’s disrespectful to our police officers.”

About 10 people remained inside the chambers when Pulido gave the man the ultimatum on to whether remove his cap or leave the premises. He did not leave, but was not arrested.

After Pulido announced the cancellation of the meeting, the attendees who had remained were greeted with applause as they exited the chambers.

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/police-637903-meeting-hat.html

jesus fucking christ

http://youtu.be/flaTrTJhkN8

what scares is i think we hear… violence

hadn't seen this before:
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-05-15/dear-class-of-2014-thanks-for-not-disinviting-me

http://www.thetower.org/article/steven-salaitas-subpar-scholarship/

if you had any idea how much trouble that situation is causing me (like, as you post)

like I'm happy that you're happy for your team I guess, but for me this isn't some abstract thing, because the boycott fucks so much up

i'm sorry it's giving you personal trouble. academic boycotts stink.

so much time. & it's not like anything, one way or the other, is going to change anything. if the hire is reinstated, will this guy lead to the downfall of Israel? right. if he's not hired, will the university get better? the university has already suffered permanent damage from the chancellor and board of trustee's decision. like this is a game for a small group of very rich people, getting "their way" with an institution they care nothing about, except perhaps as a way to get tax exemptions (for the donors who threatened to withdraw funding) or as a point to brag about (for the board of trustees). for the people dealing with this everyday, it is not a game.

& I say all that as someone who will happily visit Israel for an academic visit whenever (if flights weren't so expensive I'd go this month, I was asked but there's basically no money in their university system to support).

http://www.thebaffler.com/salvos/able-bodied-kills-us

http://www.vulture.com/2014/11/when-did-the-art-world-get-so-conservative.html

One of art's great weapons is its bad taste — how something can seem ugly, wrong, or off but still help extend art. Art is for anyone; it just isn't for everyone. And we have to stop acting as if it is something to be domesticated, proper, good. Oscar Wilde thought that art is amoral, something first for itself; sometimes, it’s something you cross the street to avoid. Sometimes art is Muddy Waters' "Mannish Boy" blatantly howling a barbaric yelp. Come what may. Operating within rules isn't art. It's about acceptance. Being good. Moreover, if we're this bunkered in, what are we retreating from? What are we so afraid of? And why?

lol is that jerry saltz whining about people criticizing him for fawning over richard prince's gross, sexist, and incredibly boring new work?

what is the work and why is it gross, sexist AND boring?

http://news.artnet.com/art-world/richard-prince-sucks-136358
this review by paddy johnson is what saltz is responding to (also i guess where i got "fawning over"). imo it would be bad and embarrassing work even if it wasn't also gross and sexist

I'm a little torn on this one, I think Saltz is onto something but I'm not sure this is the art I'd be planting my flag in the sand over since it does actually sound like kind of obvious and bad art.

It just feels a little like the male gaze has become such a discussed and analyzed and almost taboo topic that once you identify it in contemporary art the conversation stops there.