Credit: Joseph V. Labolito, Temple University
Several years ago, while attending a lecture at the American Catholic Historical Society, I spoke with a woman who was a professor of religion at Temple University. She told me about a book she had just published.
Since we were both authors scheduled to speak at the Society – I have to add I have not been invited to speak at the Society since the institution went woke – we talked for a while before our conversation turned to what it was like to teach college students in the 2020s.
That atmosphere is very much like a police state in which certain words and ideas are not allowed a place at the table. Guest speakers with opinions outside the accepted academic norm – a left-of-center social justice worldview – are treated as heretics who should be denied a voice.
Today, a college professor risks reprimand from school administrators if the words or ideas they express in class make just one or two students feel “uncomfortable.”
I asked the professor what it was like to have to walk on eggshells when she speaks before her class.
“Do you introduce so-called controversial topics with trigger warning alerts?”
She answered in the affirmative, adding that whenever she was about to speak about something that might make a student feel uncomfortable, she used the words “trigger warning” before doing so. I thought about this for a moment, picturing a hundred red flag interruptions, like a series of red flags strung along I-95.
Let’s say our professor wanted to talk about the nation’s rape laws. In that case she’d have to announce “Trigger warning, rape,” before proceeding.
This gives anyone in the class who felt an emotional connection to rape a chance to leave, cover their ears with their hands, or suck on a binkie to temper their discomfort.
Many other topics besides rape would also “require” the professor to issue a trigger warning.
“It must be exhausting,” I told her.
Much to my surprise, she seemed to defend the trigger warning system, although she did hint that there were certain aspects of the system that were less than fortunate. But she didn’t come out and condemn it outright, which was disappointing.
In this new world of student pampering, there are also what are termed, microaggressions.
Microaggressions are defined as “subtle but offensive comments or actions directed at a minority or other nondominant groups that are often unintentional.” In other words, better put a filter in that mouth of yours before speaking. And watch those jokes. A microaggression can also be as benign sounding as, “Where are you from?” or “Where were you born?” This is how crazy the college world has become.
The professor’s trigger warning system even extended into her teaching of religion. I got a sense of this when she told me that her students had congratulated her on her universal teaching methods in which it was impossible to detect any sort of bias in her presentations. In other words, the students could not tell whether she was Catholic, atheist, Baptist, Muslim, or Mormon.
I don’t know about you, but I would rather that professors offer some hint or at least a story or two about their own religious beliefs. This would greatly enhance any discussion on religion. I have to wonder if the professor’s going to great lengths to appear neutral or non-committal when it came to her personal beliefs didn’t have its roots in a trigger-based fear more than a yearning to appear neutral.
What’s wrong with a professor sharing personal religious views in order to highlight a discussion on what people believe? Nothing, unless of course saying you’re Catholic, Baptist, or Jewish might set off trigger alerts from that odd, unhappy atheist student in the back row.
Take the case of conservative pundit, former Breitbart journalist Milo Yiannopoulos. Yiannopoulos at that time made an international reputation as a gay man “with the wrong opinions.”
This Trump-loving, anti-feminist guy once told interviewer Dave Rubin that if he could take a pill that would change him into a straight man, he’d do it. A gay person is not allowed to say things like this, even though Yiannopoulos is on record as saying that gay people are Mother Nature’s special creation.
“Gay people are one of the groups that Mother Nature has given license to go wild. That’s why so many great artists, authors and inventors have been gay, because gays have the ability to push further than ordinary people can.”
Yiannopoulos, who became a fervent Catholic and is not so much in the public spotlight any more, speaks at colleges where his talks are often interrupted by so-called social justice warriors, feminists, and leftists who want opposing ideas to be snuffed out.
He loves to talk about third-wave feminism with its emphasis on man-hating while these same feminist groups ignore the real oppression of women in Middle Eastern countries. Modern feminism, he says, never comments on the brutal treatment of women in the Middle East because they are afraid of charges of Islamphobia.
