There’s a widespread notion that warning people about impending discussions of distressing topics is a necessary and desirable way of saving them from being “triggered.” Recently, for example, the Student Assembly at Cornell University passed a resolution urging the university to require trigger warnings on a broad range of “traumatic content” in teaching materials. The university quite appropriately rejected this recommendation.

Do these warnings do more good than harm? What kind of “triggering” are they supposed to present? What will their effect be? More and more people are agreeing that on the whole, these warnings aren’t helpful. They can lead to the suppression of discussion of important topics.
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