From the Editor—Sticks and Stones: Trigger Warnings, Microaggressions, and Political Correctness

In recent months a number of news stories with tantalizing headlines appearing in the Chronicle of Higher Education, New York Times, and the Atlantic, among others, caught my attention. “Sexual Paranoia Strikes Academe,” “My Title IX Inquisition,” “I’m a Liberal Professor, and My Liberal Students Terrify Me,” “In College and Hiding From Scary Ideas,” and “The Coddling of the American Mind” provide examples of a contemporary and intriguing issue related to several separate but interrelated phenomena that are currently garnering significant media attention. Relatively new terms like trigger warnings and microaggressions and a resurgence of concern about current-day political correctness have become commonplace in news accounts and online blogs about academic life in the 21st century. Although these terms relate to distinct and disparate phenomena, the overarching themes that bind them are a growing apprehension about constraints on free speech, newly emerging campus speech codes, and student sensitivity.

The term political correctness (or PC) is typically used as a pejorative to describe the language, attitudes, and actions of those who value multiculturalism and attempt to portray marginalized people in respectful ways. It is also applied to policies, such as Affirmative Action, that seek redress for oppressive conditions that have placed people at a systematic disadvantage, particularly those of minority status. Ironically, the term politically correct was first used by either Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong (Perry, 1992) or Soviet revolutionary and politician Leon Trotsky (Sipos, 2005), and it initially had a positive connotation, referring to people who were in line with Bolshevik or Communist Party ideals, which was seen as desirable. However, it was later appropriated by conservatives during the 1980s in response to Allan Bloom’s (1987) best-selling book The Closing of the American Mind, which excoriated the state of liberal education in the United States. According to Wilson (1995), by the early 1990s PC “became the rallying cry of the conservative critics of academia, the phrase behind all of their enemies—multiculturalism, affirmative action, speech codes, feminism, and tenured radicals—could be united into a single conspiracy” (p. 1). However, in an even more ironic turn, current-day conservatives have embraced their own form of PC, particularly involving any content that they view as being offensive or antithetical to their religious Christian beliefs. Whether from the conservative right or the liberal left, PC is an attempt to regulate speech by defining opposing views as intolerant, insensitive, and factually questionable.

Oddly enough, although the original brouhaha about PC originated as a conservative response to liberal thought, current complaints about insensitivity and bias are now coming from the extreme liberal left with requests for trigger warnings and the reporting of microaggressions to college authorities (Friedersdorf, 2015). Although many of us grew up with the childhood nursery rhyme, “Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words [or names] will never hurt me” (Titelman, 1996), we now know that names and words can, in fact, be harmful.

Trigger warnings originated in feminist blogs and online forums to alert readers that the posted material contained content that might exacerbate or trigger post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or other extreme emotional reactions that might be distressful to victims of sexual abuse (Schmidt, 2015). Explicit warning labels are not a new phenomenon, and the concept of content warnings dates from parental concern about violence in comic books in the 1950s. By the 1980s this had spread to concern over sex, drugs, and violence in popular music (“Sex, Drugs, and Gore,” 2015), and by the 1990s distributors of television programs and movies had adopted the routine use of explicit warnings. One striking difference between these earlier cries for content warnings is that now the college students rather than their parents feel the need to be warned in advance. And they are calling for warnings about books, lectures, speakers, and anything in the curricula or college environment that might trigger a negative emotional response. Along with the warnings, students are also asking to be exempted from being exposed to any content or ideas that might create distress. In some universities college students are also calling for safe spaces where they can be protected from ideas or words that might cause them discomfort but also allow them to feel safe around others who agree to abstain from criticizing or using microaggressions (Lukianoff & Haidt, 2015; Shulevitz, 2015). The term microaggressions was first coined in the 1970s by Harvard Medical School Professor Chester M. Pierce, and more recently popularized by Columbia University Professor Derald Wing Sue. Microaggressions are brief, subtle, often unconscious, verbal slights or actions that convey hostile, derogatory, racist, sexist, homophobic, or other insults or messages of inferiority that become cumulative over time (Sue, 2010). As Ross-Sheriff has noted (2012), even though microaggressions may not be intentional, overt, or part of a pattern, they still can have a negative effect on the person being targeted.

At first glance, these requests seem reasonable because at the core they are asking for a respectful atmosphere in which insults are not tolerated and student vulnerabilities respected. However, the list of statements that can be considered microaggressions or topics that warrant trigger warnings is so broad that they include, for example, discussions about rape; physical, emotional, or sexual abuse; child abuse; self-harm; eating disorders; legal, illegal, or psychiatric drug use; suicide; images of war; images of homosexuality; discussion of isms; discussions of consensual sex, death, pregnancy, and childbirth; or statements such as, “There is only one race, the human race,” “America is a melting pot,” “I believe the most qualified person should get the job,” “America is the land of opportunity,” and even an innocuous question like “What country are you from?” Not surprisingly, as the breadth of topics that are labeled unacceptable or potentially injurious and offensive grows, so does the concern about the way these new speech codes not only undermine academic freedom but also how they suppress the free flow of ideas and foster a culture of victimhood. As Jarvie (2014) noted, “By framing more public spaces, from the Internet to the college classroom, as full of infinite yet ill-defined hazards, trigger warnings encourage us to think of ourselves as more weak and fragile than we really are” (para. 12).

One need only look at some of the excesses in recent times to understand these concerns. Last February, Laura Kipnis (2015a), a film professor at Northwestern University, published an article that criticized the new sexual misconduct policy implemented by the university and what she saw as an overreach on student–faculty relations. In her description of the sexual paranoia that has become prevalent on college campuses, she mentioned complaints that two students had filed (and were dismissed) against a philosophy professor, and she also queried, “What becomes of students so committed to their own vulnerability, conditioned to imagine they have no agency, and protected from unequal power arrangements in romantic life?” (para. 37) Based on nothing more than this article and a tweet related to it, the students (who were not named in the article) accused her of retaliation and creating a hostile environment, and she was then subjected to two rather bizarre investigations involving Title IX and was eventually cleared of any wrongdoing (Kipnis, 2015b).

More recently, in an acknowledged lapse of judgment, a college president and other university officials wore stereotypical Mexican garb at a Halloween party; this quickly garnered national attention, and student groups presented him with a list of nine demands that included not only a public apology but demands to demonstrate how the university is retaining Black and Brown professors and a mandate to provide honors courses in diversity, among others (McIntire, 2015). For another professor, the very palpable fear of student complaints and speaking out about the new speech codes prompted him (or perhaps her) to pen an anonymous article about how his liberal students terrify him (Schlosser, 2015). Remarkably, even works of art are not exempt from trigger warnings, and students at Wellesley College petitioned to have a statue of a man in underwear banned on the grounds that it might trigger sexual assault memories for some students (Medina, 2014). And at Brandeis University, a student display aimed at educating others about microaggressions was removed when other students complained that the actual display was a microaggression. In commenting on the pervasiveness of this new development in the academy, Lukianoff and Haidt (2015) noted, “It is creating a culture in which everyone must think twice before speaking up, lest they face charges of insensitivity, aggression, or worse” (para. 5). I think that most would agree that to engage in civil discourse and debate, there is language that is simply not appropriate in the classroom. The use of profanity, racist, sexist, homophobic, and other defamatory slurs against people or groups of people is a clear deterrent to learning and should never be tolerated. But where do we draw the line? I’m not sure there is an easy answer to this, given the very subjective nature of triggers and microaggressions.

Although much of this debate has focused on undergraduate classes, and liberal arts and the humanities in particular, social work has not been exempt from this trend. In a recent issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education, Professor Neil Gilbert of the University of California, Berkeley’s School of Social Welfare acknowledged eliminating a lecture on abortion in the master’s program because of student sensitivity; he may also drop a lecture on sexual abuse prevention for the same reason (Wilson, 2015). This raises a very interesting question and dilemma for the field of social work that goes beyond issues of academic freedom and speech codes.

In contrast to purely academic programs, social work students are required to complete field practica in which they have well-defined professional responsibilities and role expectations. The competency-based 2015 Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards delineates the expectation that students “understand the value base and its ethical standards” (Council on Social Work Education, 2015, p. 7). In fact, the National Association of Social Workers’ (NASW) Code of Ethics mandates including an understanding of how social workers’ “personal experiences and affective reactions influence their professional judgment and behavior” (NASW, 2008, p. 3). Clearly, students who are either unwilling or incapable of being exposed to content or ideas that either challenge their values and beliefs or have the potential to cause significant personal distress are too impaired to be placed in a field setting working with clients. The NASW Code of Ethics further emphasizes that:

(a) Social workers should not allow their own personal problems, psychosocial distress, legal problems, substance abuse, or mental health difficulties to interfere with their professional judgment and performance or to jeopardize the best interests of people for whom they have a professional responsibility.

(b) Social workers whose personal problems, psychosocial distress, legal problems, substance abuse, or mental health difficulties interfere with their professional judgment and performance should immediately seek consultation and take appropriate remedial action by seeking professional help, making adjustments in workload, terminating practice, or taking any other steps necessary to protect clients and others. (Section 4.05)

Although requests for accommodations based on trigger warnings and microaggressions are relatively new, the issue of psychological impairment in students who enter graduate programs in counseling fields has been recognized for more than two decades (Lamb et al., 1987; Wolf, Green, Nochajski, & Kost, 2014). As Bemak, Epp, and Keys (1999) have noted, students entering clinical programs often do so based on issues in their personal lives, and in the absence of strict screening procedures at admission, it is not uncommon to find students who are academically prepared for classes but are too impaired to work with clients. This is likely true at the bachelor’s level and for students interested in macropractice as well, although research related to this is severely lacking. To address this effectively, and in a manner that supports students while at the same time ensures client safety, it is incumbent on administrators of social work programs to develop and employ strong policies related to student impairment. The student impairment policy implemented by the School of Social Work, University of Buffalo (2015) is an excellent example of such a policy.

As a profession that increasingly relies on evidence-based practices, it is also important to examine the extant research on trauma treatment. A comprehensive examination of treatment for PTSD has shown exposure therapy to be the most effective intervention for those who have experienced sexual assault. Yet trigger warnings accomplish exactly the opposite by allowing trauma victims to avoid all mention and images related to the trauma, which may in fact have the opposite effect and be reinforcing. In addition, there is sound evidence that reorganizing one’s identity around a traumatic event can exacerbate PTSD and lead to poorer mental health outcomes (McNally, 2014). If we are to foster resilience in our students, trigger warnings may have the opposite effect and keep them embedded in a culture of victimization.

Finally, if this trend continues (and I suspect that it will), given the fact that social work education routinely covers most, if not all, the topics that are thought to be triggers, it may be prudent to let applicants to our programs know in advance that such content is mandated by the very nature of our profession. This will allow them to make fully informed choices about entering the field of social work. Permitting students to opt out of lectures or readings to avoid content that may cause discomfort or canceling entire lectures or classes to assuage student fears of emotional distress does a disservice to our students and to the profession.