Not So Scary: Using and Defusing Content Warnings in the Classroom

ABSTRACT

Content warnings — notices to students that class material may evoke their past traumas — have become entangled in (over)heated debates about the role of free speech on campus. Critics denounce content warnings as silencing tools intended to promote censorship, preclude discussion of difficult topics or punish professors who hold unpopular views. Supporters too often conflate content warnings with broader demands for classroom “safe space” that fail to recognize the distinct features of posttraumatic stress as a form of mental illness. In this article, I reconceptualize content warnings as a way to facilitate access to course material for students with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). I then offer a set of concrete strategies for employing content warnings in political science courses. These strategies aim not only to support students struggling with trauma but also to de-escalate the controversy around content warnings by emphasizing how such warnings work to encourage engagement, access, and discussion.

KEYWORDS:

• Content warnings
• disability
• inclusivity
• posttraumatic stress
• trigger warnings

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Alison Cook-Sather, Rachel Plattus, Emily Coyle, Eric Hundman, and participants in the 2017 APSA Teaching and Learning Conference Inclusive Classroom track for comments on earlier versions of this article.

Notes

For an account of “mission creep,” see Volk (2015).

Several authors have noted the fact that content warnings are by definition used to signal that one is about to talk about something. See Willis (2016).

Not all people who experience trauma will develop PTSD, and there are disabling trauma responses that do not technically fit the DSM-V definition of the PTSD (see Nguyen 2011, pp. 33–38).

DSM-5 criteria for PTSD are available publicly through the National Center for PTSD, a project of the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, at: http://www.ptsd.va.gov/professional/PTSD-overview/dsm5_criteria_ptsd.asp.

For an example of this argument in the media, see Richard J. McNally (2014).

As therapeutic practice, exposure therapy also has important contraindications, among them suicidal or homicidal ideation (see van Minnen et al. 2012).

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) does not classify specific diseases as “counting” as disabilities, but EEOC sources note that “[m]ental health conditions like major depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) should easily qualify” as disabilities under the Americans with Disabilities Act and thus entail a legal right to accommodation (EEOC, no date, emphasis in original). The EEOC provides examples of such accommodations in the workplace, all of which go well beyond the kind of advance notice supplied by content warnings: “altered break and work schedules … quiet office space or devices that create a quiet work environment, changes in supervisory methods (e.g., written instructions from a supervisor who usually does not provide them), specific shift assignments, and permission to work at home” (EEOC, no date). While many college students may not have completed the exhaustive process of formally requesting disability accommodation under the ADA and not all countries have legislation parallel to the ADA, the ethical obligation still applies.

I remain agnostic on the question of whether content warnings negatively affect the learning experience of students who do not need them. There may be no inherent problem with providing content warnings to all students through syllabi or by mentioning them in class. However, in the current political environment, faculty have a strong incentive to avoid unnecessary controversy.

According to the Department of Veterans’ Affairs Web site, approximately 6.8% of Americans will suffer from PTSD during their lifetimes. While the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have brought male veterans suffering from PTSD into the national spotlight, 10.4% of women will have PTSD during their lifetimes, compared to just 5% of men (Gradus, 2012). Thus, providing accommodations for PTSD is a question not only of disability rights but also of gender equity.

Again, it is important to keep in mind that not all trauma survivors suffer from PTSD.

While I focus on human-caused traumas here, students may also have PTSD responses because of car accidents, fires, natural disasters, or other experiences without a direct human cause. Thus, not all content warnings are necessarily connected to issues of sexism, racism, or injustice.

That acknowledgment is not, in itself, likely to provoke a trauma response. A student who cannot hear or read even the word “torture” or “rape” without a flight-fright-freeze-fawn response is a student in crisis who needs immediate mental health support. It is explicit descriptions that usually set off trauma responses and, therefore, merit content warnings.

For examples of such debate, see Nesrine Malik (2015) and Lulu Chang (2014).

The statement argues that such measures are simply “displacing the problem, locating its solution in the classroom rather than in administrative attention” (AAUP 2014, paragraph 10).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sofia Fenner

Sofia Fenner is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Bryn Mawr College. Her research explores the politics of opposition and co-optation in authoritarian regimes with a regional focus on the Middle East and North Africa.