1.An article about self-identification in recruiting Indigenous faculty
2. i)A website responding to “Critical Social Justice” (woke-ism). ii) On trigger warnings.
1.SELF-IDENTIFICATION
Oosthoek, Sharon. “Going beyond self-identification in recruiting Indigenous faculty,” University Affairs/Affaires universitaires, Jan 11, 2023, https://www.universityaffairs.ca/features/feature-article/going-beyond-self-identification-in-recruiting-indigenous-faculty/#comments, accessed March 10, 2023
- “A few high-profile cases involving faculty members who may have falsely presented themselves as Indigenous are calling into question the practice of self-identification.”
- To date, six comments follow the article.
2.MISCELLANEOUS SOCIAL PHENOMENA AND THEIR POSSIBLE RELATIONS-TO OR IMPLICATIONS-FOR EDI
Responses to ‘Woke-ism‘
Website: “New Discourses: pursuing the light of objective truth in subjective darkness,” https://newdiscourses.com
- New Discourses is spearheaded by Dr. James Lindsay
- Lindsay coauthored, with Helen Pluckrose, Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything About Race, Gender, and Identity — And Why This Harms Everybody (2020): https://www.amazon.ca/Cynical-Theories-Scholarship-Everything-Identity_and/dp/1634312023
- Excerpt from the About page:
Welcome to New Discourses! We like to think of this place as a home for the politically homeless, especially for those who feel like they’ve been displaced from their political homes because of the movement sometimes called “Critical Social Justice” and the myriad negative effects it has had on our political environments, both on the left and on the right. If that’s you, welcome, and make yourself at home.
New Discourses is, by design, meant to be apolitical in the usual sense. That means it is not interested in conservative, progressive, left, right, center, or any other particular political stances. It is, in this regard, only broadly liberal in the philosophical and ethical stance. In that case, whether you’re a progressive left-liberal or a conservative right-liberal, traditional or classical in any case, you’re likely to find what we’re doing refreshing. (And if you don’t, we can talk about it! That’s the point!)
Trigger Warnings
Bill Maher recently made mockery of Trigger Warnings. I’ll include the You Tube link to his rant at the end of this post. In the video clip, Maher references a recent meta-analysis by researchers at Flinders University. I’ve searched, and believe I’ve found, the paper he refers to. I include both the citation and an excerpt as follows:
Bridgland, Victoria, Payton J. Jones, and Benjamin W. Bellet. “A meta-analysis of the effects of trigger warnings, content warnings, and content notes.” (2022). Preprint. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Payton-Jones-2/publication/362875663_A_Meta-Analysis_of_the_Efficacy_of_Trigger_Warnings_Content_Warnings_and_Content_Notes/links/630538ff1ddd4470210322a2/A-Meta-Analysis-of-the-Effects-of-Trigger-Warnings-Content-Warnings-and-Content-Notes.pdf
Public Significance Statement: This meta-analytic review suggests that trigger warnings–statements that alert viewers to material containing distressing themes related to past experiences–do not help people to: reduce the negative emotions felt when viewing material, avoid potentially distressing material, or improve the learning/understanding of that material. However, trigger warnings make people feel anxious prior to viewing material. Overall, results suggest that trigger warnings in their current form are not beneficial, and may instead lead to a risk of emotional harm.
Here are a few other articles on worries about trigger warnings, followed by a cursory analysis of trigger warnings that I began last summer (2022):
Flaherty, Colleen. “Death Knell for Trigger Warnings?,” Inside Higher Ed, March 21, 2019, https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/03/21/new-study-says-trigger-warnings-are-useless-does-mean-they-should-be-abandoned, accessed march 10, 2023
- “Trigger warnings don’t help students, and they might even hurt those grappling with serious trauma. That’s the upshot of a new study on trigger warnings published in Clinical Psychological Science.”
- The study referenced by Flaherty: Sanson, M., Strange, D., & Garry, M. (2019). Trigger Warnings Are Trivially Helpful at Reducing Negative Affect, Intrusive Thoughts, and Avoidance. Clinical Psychological Science, 7(4), 778–793. https://doi.org/10.1177/2167702619827018, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/2167702619827018?journalCode=cpxa, accessed March 10, 2023
Jones, Payton J., Benjamin W. Bellet, and Richard J. McNally. “Helping or harming? The effect of trigger warnings on individuals with trauma histories.” Clinical Psychological Science 8.5 (2020): 905-917. Available in its entirety via this link: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2167702620921341, accessed March 10, 2023
- “Some trigger warning advocates have suggested that although trigger warnings may not help individuals cope with triggering content, they may help individuals avoid the content altogether. Although avoidance reduces anxiety in the short run (Hofmann & Hay, 2018), it maintains or worsens PTSD in the long run (e.g., Brewin & Holmes, 2003; Dunmore, Clark, & Ehlers, 1999; Foa & Kozak, 1986).”
- “Trigger warnings should serve as an important caution to both clinical and nonclinical professionals who use interventions aimed to improve well-being among trauma survivors. Such practices should be thoroughly vetted via appropriate scientific techniques before they are adopted. Using unvetted interventions is irresponsible to victims of trauma.”
Vingiano, Ali. “How The “Trigger Warning” Took Over The Internet, BuzzFeedNews, May 5, 2014.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/alisonvingiano/how-the-trigger-warning-took-over-the-internet, acmes March 10, 2023
- Vingiano covers a lot of territory — from the phrase *trigger warning*’s origins, to its life on social media, and its appearance in colleges and universities.
A cursory analysis of Trigger Warnings by Pam Lindsay, June 2022:
I suppose the internet should just be bracketed with one big *trigger warning*, as should the news, and hey, when you start your day, bracket it with a *trigger warning*. I give myself a *trigger warning* just before I look in the mirror each morning because I am without fail horrified by what I see. However, unless one completely unplugs from the world and, cf Voltaire, just tends her little garden, she is going to be exposed to a whole lot of horrible stuff. This is because there is a whole lot of horrible stuff in the world. And this horrible stuff is right there alongside the mostly mundane stuff and the bits of wonderful stuff…
…How does one ever go to counselling or attend a support group? *trigger warning* Something said here might upset you, and something you say might upset me. Can you imagine a counsellor walking out of a session? You didn’t warn me THAT was coming! Or requiring that her patient issue a *trigger warning* each time she is about to reveal something painful? Granted, caregiver burnout is an occupational hazard. But so are muggings, accidents, traffic stress, and difficult clients when driving a cab — another public facing job with a high burnout rate.
A charitable use of a ‘kind of’ trigger warning would be to indicate a change in topic. You’ve been sharing a laugh with a friend and you indicate that the next thing you say is of a serious nature. Else in a fit of laughter you remember to mention a mutual friend is on life support. Or, you’re delivering bad news to a friend and you say, solemnly, Are you sitting down? Or, we have to have a talk. You don’t say *trigger warning* I want to talk to you about your husband’s infidelity.
Do you see here how *trigger warning* makes a mockery of the topic and also makes the topic a “you problem”?
My husband, Paul, threw me a counter-argument:
The Genocide Awareness Project, the annual Pro-Life Club demonstration at our university — among others. For those unfamiliar, these clubs often display a poster (or posters) of aborted fetuses captioned with claims that abortion is genocide.
The posters tend to create quite a dust up on campuses. A number of students and staff claim, among other things, that these images are harmful to women. Particularly those who’ve had abortions, miscarried, are trying to get pregnant, or who are currently pregnant.
The powers that be at Uleth accommodate both the Pro-life club and those bothered by the posters by issuing something of a *trigger warning*. The date, time, and location of the display is announced on the notice board. Hence students, staff, and faculty are offered a “choice chain,” an alternate route whereby they can “choose to walk by the display or not.” https://www.uleth.ca/notice/notices/abortion-awareness-project-currently-campus#.YM30WS2Q3Sw
Counter activists come out in numbers on the same day, diverting people from the display area, holding protest signs, or offering brochures for counselling services.
The upshot is that, being forewarned, people can bypass the display if they want to. But if they either inadvertently or must pass by and are bothered, others are there to help them cope.
My response to Paul:
Cancer is the leading cause of death in Canada, and the second leading cause in the US. Cancer causes a great deal of pain and suffering for both patients their loved ones. Depictions of cancer are, for some, a painful reminder of the disease. And yet anti-tobacco ads with vivid images of cancer stricken patients appear on television and on cigarette packages.
No *trigger warnings* are issued for viewers. In fact, viewers are MEANT to be triggered, often with the blessing of cancer survivors and their families. That some people will be traumatized by the ads is presumably a subordinate consideration to the greater good: dissuading others from tobacco use.
Mock vehicle carnage at grads and MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) videos are also employed to dissuade people from driving under the influence. That the ads will cause some to flash back to their own gruesome accident scenes, whether alcohol was involved or not, is an autonomous effect of this mode of shock-messaging. Again, retraumatizing some accident victims is presumed subordinate to the greater good.
The aim of Pro-lifers displaying pictures of aborted fetuses is to dissuade some women from having an abortion. Pro-lifers believe they are contributing to the greater good, and so that some are retraumatized by depictions of aborted fetuses is a subordinate consideration to their view that millions of babies are being murdered. If Pro-lifers believe deep down that millions of babies are being murdered, setting up a display in a university is a pretty constrained response.
Some Pro-Lifers are women who have had abortions and regret doing so. They’ve turned the trauma of that experience into activism to spare others their pain. Just as some Pro-Choicers turn the trauma of their experiences into activism to spare others their pain. And as the mother who lost a child to a drunk driver attempts to scare the bejeebers out of would-be drunk drivers. And the woman with the tracheotomy undergoing her fifth round of chemo attempts to scare the bejeebers out of teens tempted to smoke.
So, the very people for whom a *trigger warning* is issued are often the people issuing the *triggers*. And these are people who want to evade you from blocking these triggers, they want you to face up to them. But are you *triggered*?
If the only people who are *triggered* by these particular messages are the ones who have suffered these particular traumas, it’s a pretty sick game isn’t it? But, perhaps that’s the price to be paid for consciousness raising. Though in this light it seems a pittance to offer a *trigger warning*.
*Amendment, March 11, 2023: If, as MADD and Anti-tobacco campaigns, we might allow some will be hurt for the greater good, why not allow that — for the greater good — some will be hurt in the pursuit of truth?
Maher, Bill. “New Rule: Trigger Warning!,” Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO), March 3, 2023, accessed March 10, 2023,
Keeping An Eye On EDI 