It's very frustrating to see Greg Lukianoff share his own experience with depression and the benefits of cognitive behavioral therapy and then not recognize the role trigger warnings can play in furthering the aims of CBT. chronicle.com/article/How-Co…
A trigger warning isn't a command to turn away from potential trauma, but is merely a head's up, a preparation. This is entirely consistent with the practice of CBT. To frame it as somehow damaging to student mental health is simply false.
I'm also befuddled as to how Lukianoff continues to back away from the title of his own book, all but disclaiming the use of "coddled." If you're genuinely interested in solving a problem as I take him to be, adding fuel to a misperception of the problem is generally a bad idea.
The student mental health crisis is a product of the gauntlet students have been required to run before college coupled with the extreme lengths many must go to even afford to attend college.
We have solutions to those problems and the U of C. code for free speech isn't among them. Free college, moving away from high stakes standardized assessment in K-12. This is what we need. Lukianoff is tilting at phantoms.
