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British university puts trigger warning on Greek mythology for ‘distressing’ content

Professor slams move as ‘embarrassing’ censorship

The University of Exeter put a trigger warning on two classic pieces of ancient Greek literature, Homer’s “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey,” for what it calls “distressing” content.

The school, located in England, is now warning students at the beginning of its “Women in Homer” course they could “encounter views and content that they may find uncomfortable,” The Daily Mail reported.

It cites themes of rape, sexual violence, and infant mortality in the two poems.

Students who experience “distress” due to the poems’ contents should “feel free to deal with it in ways that help (e.g. to leave the classroom, contact Wellbeing, and of course talk to the lecturer),” the university said, according to information obtained by The Daily Mail.

A university spokesman told the newspaper that “content warnings ‘help ensure students who may be affected by specific issues are not subjected to any potential unnecessary distress.’”

However, a professor of humanities at Thales College in North Carolina told The College Fix the move undermines the role of higher education.

“The ‘trigger warnings’ are disguised forms of anticipatory censorship. They tell the students in advance that what they are going to read is in some way filthy or stupid or wicked or contemptible,” Anthony Esolen told The Fix. “Why you would want to teach what you despise is beyond me.”

Prestigious colleges such as the University of Exeter once “produced titans of learning in every field, explorers, inventors, ethnologists, missionaries, statesmen; now, by their own unwitting admission, they seek to produce over-touchy neurotics incapable of reading Homer without a pussycat to stroke and opioid cookies nearby,” he said.

The Fix reached out to the University of Exeter’s Press Office and English Department two weeks ago via email about the university’s intent with the trigger warnings, but received no response.

MORE: Princeton library adds trigger warnings to ‘offensive’ archive materials

Esolen said higher education institutions likely would not place trigger warnings on what professors consider politically favored ideas, such as themes of libertarian socialism, Marxism, and feminism.

He said trigger warnings on any material hinder the abilities of “genuine students of culture” to fully engage in academics.

Esolen also said he is stunned by the university’s “complete lack of historical imagination,” adding that a trigger warning “applied to the great epics of ancient Greece is … utterly embarrassing.”

Homer’s “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey” are two epic poems that depict fictional events centered around the legendary Trojan War. “The Iliad” describes the tensions between Achilles and King Agamemnon during the final stages of the war, while “The Odyssey” chronicles the journey of Odysseus, the king of Ithaca, as he returns home after the war.

Homer and his writings should not be confined to any single perspective; “his imagination is broader than that,” the professor said.

Esolen said when he attended Princeton University, he would have considered a trigger warning an insult to his intelligence. “We would all have treated with derisive contempt anybody who suggested that students be ‘warned’ about challenging material,” he said.

He referenced his experience in a moral philosophy course taught by a professor with a difference world view than his own, noting that he recognized disagreements as an inherent part of his university education.

“I did not find it worthy even to mention to my friends. What would be the point?” he told The Fix.

Similarly, England’s former Prime Minister Boris Johnson also condemned the university’s decision, saying the two poems laid the “foundation for Western Literature,” The Telegraph reported.

“Are they really saying that their students are so wet, so feeble-minded and so generally namby-pamby that they can’t enjoy Homer?” he said.

“Is the faculty of Exeter University really saying that its students are the most quivering and pathetic in the entire 28 centuries of Homeric studies?” Johnson said.

MORE: University puts trigger warning on Hemingway’s ‘Old Man and the Sea’

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About the Author

College Fix contributor Hanna Bechtel is a student at Liberty University studying political science. She is a teacher’s assistant for one of her professors and enjoys investing in the students she serves. She also plays the violin for her hometown church’s worship team in Pennsylvania.