I just can’t help but wonder how author George Orwell might react to the recent announcement of a British taxpayer-funded university placing a so-called ‘trigger warning’ against his own anti-Big Government cautionary novel, ‘1984’.
As it turns out, the University of University of Northampton located in England’s East Midlands, has found fit to brand the dystopian novel as “offensive and upsetting” to the frail little things enrolled in British higher education.
As reported by Nathaniel Charles of Breitbart.com (emphasis mine);
The University of Northampton has branded George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984 — which examines how the role of truth and facts in a society can be manipulated under authoritarian rule — with a trigger warning over supposed concerns about “explicit material” within the book.
Following a Freedom of Information request from the Mail on Sunday, it was discovered that the English department at the University of Northampton had warned students taking the module ‘Identity Under Construction’ about Orwell’s anti-totalitarianism novel as it might be upsetting or “offensive” to the fragile generation.
The ‘Identity Under Construction’ module is advertised on the University of Northampton’s website as including the study of literature and poetry through a lens of “feminism, postmodernism and postcolonialism” and has a “primary focus” on the “constructions of identity, around issues such as race, class, gender and sexuality”.
Speaking to Breitbart London, former teacher turned GB News Host Calvin Robinson branded the trigger warning placed on 1984 as “absurd”.
“1984 was supposed to be a piece of fiction, but in current times it reads more like an instruction manual. There’s no wonder the upper echelons of society are trying to censor it”, Robinson said.
“Universities have lost their collective minds. One’s time as a student is supposed to be a time of exploration and open debate – these days, it seems, they want to wrap everyone up in cotton wool and ‘protect’ them from different/offensive opinions. It’s absurd”, he continued.