"Trigger warnings" have become the latest football in the political playing field of higher education. My own university attracted national attention earlier this fall when an administrator informed all entering undergraduates that the university does "not support so-called ‘trigger warnings.’"

Of course, as many pointed out, academic freedom protects the right to use trigger warnings if professors deem them pedagogically useful. A letter that was meant to affirm freedom in learning and pedagogy, ironically, seemed to deny one part of it.

Much of the dispute about trigger warnings, unfortunately, appears to turn on rather different interpretations of what they are. An earlier article in The Chronicle described trigger warnings as "written or spoken warnings given by professors to alert students that course material might be traumatic for people with particular life experiences." And when so understood, the case for them can be straightforward.

Read more at The Chronicle of Higher Education