‘WARN US ON TRAUMA’

Univ. snowflakes

CORNELL University’s student assembly has voted unanimously to require trigger warnings for “traumatic” content in classes — a move that would undermine academic freedom on campus.

The recently passed resolution “implores all instructors to provide content warnings on the syllabus that may be discussed,” meaning professors would be on the hook for anticipating what readings or other materials might “traumatize” their students.

This spells disaster for free speech.

According to the resolution, topics that would require a trigger warning include “but [are] not limited to” sexual assault, domestic violence, self-harm, suicide, child abuse, racial hate crimes, transphobic violence, homophobic harassment and xenophobia.”

Meeting minutes show the student assembly voted for the resolution last week.

I’m a fellow at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, an advocacy group for campus free speech, and we wrote to Cornell earlier this week imploring the school not to adopt this policy for the sake of academic freedom.

“That Cornell’s student government passed this unanimously should prompt Cornell to take a hard look about how its current crop of students view getting a college education,” FIRE attorney Alex Morey told The Post.

And students are pushing back, too. Cornell senior and College Republicans president Avery Bower said he “firmly opposes” the resolution.

“It is troubling how little academic freedom is regarded by many of the students here at Cornell,” he told The Post.

Trigger warnings have been growing in popularity across campuses over the past decade and are intended to protect students from material that might upset them.

But free speech advocates have long warned that requiring professors to proactively anticipate what students might subjectively find “triggering” could lead them to self-censor or avoid certain material.

“There’s no question that [trigger warnings] make professors more trepidacious about what they cover,” FIRE CEO Greg Lukianoff told The Post. “That’s a disaster for academic freedom.”

FIRE is demanding a “substantive response” from the university that reaffirms its commitment to free speech.