Free speech leader says school treating students like ‘snowflakes’
A university in England has put over 200 trigger warnings on Shakespeare works and adaptations for things such as the “popping of balloons,” violence, “psychological trauma,” “extreme weather,” and more.
The University of the West of England issued warnings for murder, suicide, violence, and family trauma in “Macbeth,” “as well as ‘storms’ and ‘extreme weather’ in ‘The Tempest,'” The Telegraph reported.
The school also placed a warning on a stage adaptation of “The Tempest” due to the “popping of balloons,” while another work, “Much Ado About Nothing,” has been flagged for “treatment of women” and “mourning.”
For “Romeo and Juliet,” the university issued warnings for “death, suicide, violence, knives and blood,” the outlet reported.
Further, “Students are warned that ‘the Winter’s Tale’ has ‘accusations of adultery’ and ‘references to wild animal attack,’” the New York Post reported.
A university spokesperson said the “warnings were previously requested by students with sensory processing issues and experiences of trauma.”
However, Free Speech Union leader Toby Young said he would be “furious about being treated like such a snowflake” if he were a drama student at the school.
Another British school, the University of Exeter, has also recently faced scrutiny for its trigger warnings on two classic pieces of ancient Greek literature, Homer’s “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey,” The College Fix previously reported.
The university is now warning students at the beginning of its “Women in Homer” course they could “encounter views and content that they may find uncomfortable.” It cites themes of rape, sexual violence, and infant mortality in the two poems.
Similarly, Nottingham University has assigned Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales” a content notice for its “expressions of Christian faith.”
One Arizona State University professor told The Fix in November that these warnings “show the feeble-mindedness of the secular academy.”
Nottingham also “banned the term Anglo-Saxon from its module titles,” The Telegraph reported.
“Professors renamed a master’s course in Viking and Anglo-Saxon studies to ‘Viking and early medieval English studies’ in a move to ‘decolonise the curriculum,’” the outlet reported.
MORE: Princeton library adds trigger warnings to ‘offensive’ archive materials
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