University of Northampton in England Puts Trigger Warning on Orwell's 1984
By: Legal Insurrection
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
This is beyond parody. Did the school even stop for a moment and consider how this would be perceived?
The College Fix reports:
University puts a trigger warning on George Orwell's '1984'
In an Orwellian turn of events, the University of Northampton has put a trigger warning on George Orwell's dystopian novel "1984," citing "explicit material" that some students may find "offensive and upsetting," the Daily Mailreports.
The Mail verified the existence of the trigger warning through a freedom of information request filed with the UK campus.
"There's a certain irony that students are now being issued trigger warnings before reading Nineteen Eighty-Four," Tory MP Andrew Bridgen told the Mail. "Our university campuses are fast becoming dystopian Big Brother zones where Newspeak is practised to diminish the range of intellectual thought and cancel speakers who don't conform to it."
The novel "1984" was published in 1949 "as a warning against totalitarianism," according to Britannica. "The chilling dystopia made a deep impression on readers, and [Orwell's] ideas entered mainstream culture in a way achieved by very few books."
"The book's title and many of its concepts, such as Big Brother and the Thought Police, are instantly recognized and understood, often as bywords for modern social and political abuses."
A university spokesman said told the Mail that while "it is not university policy, we may warn students of content in relation to violence, sexual violence, domestic abuse and suicide. In these circumstances we explain to applicants as part of the recruitment process that their course will include some challenging texts."
In addition to "1984" getting a trigger warning at the University of Northampton, the UK-based Salford University has put trigger warnings on Charlotte Bronte's "Jane Eyre" and Charles Dickens's "Great Expectations," which are marked as "distressing," the Daily Mailreports:
The warnings accompany a reading list given to students on Salford's BA English literature course, and have been revealed in response to a Freedom of Information request.
The university warns undergraduates: "There are scenes and discussions of violence and sexual violence in several of the primary texts studied on this module. Some students may find the content of the following texts distressing."
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