Wall Street Journal Editorial, Cornell’s Academic Freedom Test:

Diversity enforcers have become speech enforcers on many college campuses, but a few schools are starting to articulate some limits. The latest is Cornell University, which has refused to adopt a student resolution that would have required “trigger warnings” anytime an upsetting subject is mentioned in the classroom.

Under the proposal, professors would have been required to warn students in advance about “traumatic” content that touched on topics like self-harm, domestic, racial or transphobic violence and homophobic harassment. Professors would have been even more nervous than they already are that any open-format classroom discussion or debate might wander into trigger territory.

The entire idea of a trigger warning for speech is antithetical to the idea of a university, and in a previous age no one would have taken it seriously. But this is era of woke censorship, so it’s news when campus leaders push back, as they have at Cornell.

“Learning to engage with difficult and challenging ideas is a core part of a university education: essential to our students’ intellectual growth, and to their future ability to lead and thrive in a diverse society,” Cornell President Martha Pollack and Provost Michael Kotlikoff wrote in rejecting the resolution. Academic freedom, they note, means that professors get to choose their course content as well as how they present it to their students.

In recent weeks, Stanford University and Columbia University have had to tangle with students who felt triggered by exposure to conservative judges. …

Cornell’s position is good news, but these bad ideas will recur as long as the diversity, equity and inclusion bureaucracy governs academia, pushing the notion that honest speech and debate are traumatic. If universities want to reclaim real intellectual openness on campus, they have to help students get comfortable with being uncomfortable.

• Cornell Review, President Pollack Rejects Trigger Warnings
• Daily Wire, Cornell University Rejects Student Demands To Insert ‘Trigger Warnings’ Before Class Discussions
• FIRE, Cornell Gives Student Assembly a Firm ‘No’ on Trigger Warning Mandate
• The Hill, Cornell Leaders Reject Student Resolution Demanding Course Trigger Warnings
• William Jacobson (Cornell), Cornell Rejects Student Demands for ‘Trigger Warnings’ Before Class Discussions
• New York Post, Cornell’s Classroom Trigger Warnings Are a Disaster For Free Speech
• Washington Free Beacon, Cornell Rejects Push for Trigger Warnings in Classrooms