The Wall Street Journal reports that a recent poll of 800 college students indicates that the major prefer mandatory trigger warnings on campus syllabi. I don’t know if the study is accurate or representative. If it is, then it’s a nice reminder that “leftist” and “liberal” aren’t the same. Some leftists are liberals, but many are not.

Regarding trigger warnings: Suppose my dean sent me an email saying, “Dear Prof. Brennan, I am writing to inform you that one of the students in your class, Eddie, has a medical condition in which if he hears anyone say the word ‘rabbit’, he immediately suffers severe intestinal distress and then enters a catatonic state. I am thus requesting that you make accommodations for Eddie. Please inform Eddie before you discuss any leporine topics, so that he may leave the class to protect his health.” Now, if my dean requested that, and if that were a real condition, even I, a callous and elitist snob, would make accommodations.

However, I’d at least want to see some evidence that this is a real thing. It would be pretty awful for the student or the dean to demand, or even request, that I refrain from using the word “rabbit” unless they actually had strong evidence to believe that mentioning the word really does cause harm to some students. Sure, it’s a petty request. I can’t even remember mentioned rabbits once in class. But, still, you shouldn’t try to push me around and tell me how to talk without good reason. That’s just basic human decency.

What’s striking about the “trigger warning” advocates is how they just don’t seem to think it’s necessary or important to try to prove that students really are at risk of psychological harm from mentioning certain taboo topics. Instead, the writings out there on this overwhelmingly ignore the empirical issues (aside from issues about how many students have been subject to this or that bad thing), and instead seem to be more interested in expressing concern. As Jonathan Haidt says, the idea of using trigger warnings actually goes against what psychologists know about trauma, phobias, and post-traumatic stress. Trigger-warning advocates don’t make the empirical case because they can’t make it; it’s not just that they lack evidence, but the evidence goes the other way.

People  didn’t come to love trigger warnings because they discovered evidence in psychology that the warnings “work”. So, the most charitable interpretation of the trigger-warning phenomenon is that well-meaning professors and students have constructed a somewhat costly code of meaning meant to signal solidarity with various victims and causes. Trigger-warnings aren’t about protecting students. They are instead a form of flag-waving. The less charitable interpretation is that trigger-warning advocates just want to control what others say. For instance, we have a widespread phenomenon of labeling conservative ideas as “micro-aggressions”.