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Last year, after quite a bit of discussion with friends and colleagues online, I added a trigger warning (or, as I describe it, a content note) to my syllabus. Here’s what it said:

Course Content Note

At times this semester we will be discussing historical events that may be disturbing, even traumatizing, to some students. If you ever feel the need to step outside during one of these discussions, either for a short time or for the rest of the class session, you may always do so without academic penalty. (You will, however, be responsible for any material you miss. If you do leave the room for a significant time, please make arrangements to get notes from another student or see me individually.)

If you ever wish to discuss your personal reactions to this material, either with the class or with me afterwards, I welcome such discussion as an appropriate part of our coursework.

I won’t rehash all the conversations that went into that decision — if you’re interested, you can read pieces that I wrote during the process here and here and here. But to summarize quickly, I was interested in giving my students advance notice of material that they might find unsettling, as well as guidance about their rights and responsibilities in my classroom.

I introduced the note for my summer classes last year and have revised it each semester since. Here’s how it looks now, on my upcoming fall syllabi:

Course Content Note

At times this semester we will be discussing historical events that may be disturbing, even traumatizing, to some students. If you suspect that specific material is likely to be emotionally challenging for you, I’d be happy to discuss any concerns you may have before the subject comes up in class. Likewise, if you ever wish to discuss your personal reactions to course material with the class or with me individually afterwards, I welcome such discussions as an appropriate part of our classwork.

If you ever feel the need to step outside during a class discussion you may always do so without academic penalty. You will, however, be responsible for any material you miss. If you do leave the room for a significant time, please make arrangements to get notes from another student or see me individually to discuss the situation.

As you can see, most of the text remains from the original version. Beyond various language tweaks, the major changes are these:

First, I added a sentence inviting students to discuss potentially traumatizing material with me before it arises in class. If a student knows that they’re likely to find particular course content challenging, I’d rather have that conversation in advance than leave us both to be surprised in the classroom — far better for us to strategize together before the issue arises than to react to it on the fly.

Second, and more subtly, I re-arranged the material. Where I had originally offered students the option of stepping out of the room before stating my willingness to discuss students’ personal response to potentially traumatic material, I now foreground discussion. The new version of the note centers dialogue — before, during, or after class — as central to the academic project.

I got the content note basically where I want it pretty quickly. There was, though, one element of the project that I wrestled with for a bit longer — how to discuss it in class.

Like most professors, I’m a believer in going over the syllabus point by point at the beginning of the semester. When we arrived at the content note, though, I initially tended to get a little flustered. Everything else we cover that first day — absence policy, grading, office hours — is familiar ground for both me and the students, but this is new territory for all of us. (I’ve asked a couple of times whether students had ever had a trigger warning in class before, and none has yet said yes.)

When I introduced the content note for the first time, I felt like I was bringing the session to a screeching halt. The note is intended as a quiet heads-up for the few students who may need it, but I initially tended to over-explain, leaving the impression that the course was going to be far more fraught than it actually is.

This spring, though, I came up with a more concise and focused way of addressing it. As an illustration of what I have in mind, I tell the class that the death of children may be a topic that comes up in the course, noting that a student who has lost a child or a sibling might respond differently to such material than one who hasn’t. It’s for helping to manage those sorts of situations, I say, that the content note is intended.

This specificity, it turns out, is really helpful. In the abstract, a syllabus trigger warning strikes a lot of students — and a lot of professors, and a lot of observers of higher ed — as weird, intrusive, and unnecessary. But when I introduce it in the context of parental bereavement and the murder of Emmett Till or Charles Darwin’s eulogy for his young daughter, my students tend to listen, nod, ask a couple of small questions, and then move on with me to the next item on the list.

I’ll continue tweaking the note and how I introduce it going forward. At this point, though, I see the experiment as a success.

In the last few days sociology professor Sara Goldrick-Rab, one of the nation’s leading advocates for free higher education, has come under sustained and increasingly preposterous attack for some of her social media posts.

The attacks have focused on two sets of tweets. In one, posted several weeks ago, Goldrick-Rab twice characterized Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, who recently slashed budgets and eviscerated faculty governance and tenure the University of Wisconsin system where Goldrick-Rab works, as a fascist. Those tweets were dumb, Goldrick-Rab has apologized for them, and they aren’t likely to be of much lasting interest beyond the fainting-couch brigades of the online right-wing.

It’s the other set of tweets that brought Goldrick-Rab more broad condemnation, condemnation that reflects far more poorly on her antagonists than on her.

The second set of tweets actually predated the ones discussed above — Goldrick-Rab posted them a month and a half ago (though nobody paid them any particular attention until the outrage machine got fired up last week). Here’s what they consisted of:

Back on May 31, a graduating high school senior posted this group photo of himself and some friends celebrating their impending enrollment at the University of Wisconsin:

On (to) Wisconsin! @UWMadison #FutureBadgers pic.twitter.com/uVtWFqK9dH

— Nathan Stanley (@nstanley8) May 31, 2015

About a week later, Goldrick-Rab stumbled upon the tweet, and replied with this:

@nstanley8 @mike_mleczko34 @kryptin8 @rpcastle66 @amy_walkowski @grace_ziegler I hate to bring bad news but http://t.co/qnQPwCIaFl — Sara Goldrick-Rab (@saragoldrickrab) June 7, 2015

Some of the students responded to her tweet, she responded to some of their responses — tweeting that she thought they should know about the recent events at UW because she assumed they would want “a degree of value” and she didn’t “want students 2 waste their $.”

And that was it. The whole thing amounted to about a dozen tweets over the course of a little over an hour late one Sunday night, with pretty much nobody watching.

When the College Fix reported on the exchange a couple of days ago, though, it referred to the tweets as “shocking new allegations” of what the UW College Republicans called “harassment” that “cross[ed] all boundaries of professionalism and respect.”

That’s overheated enough, but it’s become standard rhetoric in disputes like these. What followed isn’t.

On Thursday, the University Committee of the University of Wisconsin-Madison — the Executive Committee of the university’s Faculty Senate — released a statement declaring that while they “support free speech and diversity of opinion, as has been our tradition,”

Such freedom requires responsible behavior and in this respect we are deeply dismayed with the actions Professor Sara Goldrick-Rab has taken toward students and faculty on Twitter in recent weeks to discourage them from coming here. While claiming to stand for academic freedom, she has in fact damaged that principle and our institution with inaccurate statements and misrepresentations.

This is preposterous. Academic freedom doesn’t “require responsible behavior.” You don’t “damage” it by exercising it in ways others dislike. Academic freedom is precisely the freedom to act in ways that others find irresponsible or obnoxious — that’s what academic freedom is for. That’s what it is.

Goldrick-Rab is an active and an innovative user of social media. Twitter, specifically, is a medium she’s engaged with and curious about, regularly exploring its boundaries and potential by doing stuff like searching for tweets using the word FAFSA and then retweeting what strangers have to say about it. Her use of Twitter is part of her scholarship and part of her activism, and her freedom to use it is essential to her academic freedom. Again, that’s what academic freedom is — the freedom to innovate and explore without fear of reprisal.

At a moment when tenure has just been dramatically weakened at the University of Wisconsin, for an official faculty body to cast a professor’s public speech in her field of study as beyond the pale isn’t just intellectually shoddy, it’s dangerous.

Now, there’s a discussion to be had about whether Goldrick-Rab’s tweets represent a useful model of how to use Twitter for activist ends. My own sense is that entering into strangers’ timelines to buttonhole them about your own causes is rarely all that productive in any context, and if Goldrick-Rab had dragged the encouter out or highlighted it for her ten thousand followers I might have some qualms. But she didn’t — she just tweeted at few people who were talking about her university, talked with them a bit, then left them alone.

And the idea that those students were somehow cowed or intimidated by her tweets is contradicted eloquently by their own responses:

@kryptin8 @saragoldrickrab @nstanley8 @rpcastle66 @amy_walkowski @grace_ziegler who are you lol

— Michael Mleczko (@mike_mleczko34) June 7, 2015

They had the situation entirely in hand. It should have ended there.

Zandria Robinson, an assistant professor of Sociology at the University of Memphis, has left her job in the wake of media attention to her tweets on whiteness and the Confederate flag.

Robinson’s Twitter account is now locked, but according to an article in today’s Washington Times she recently tweeted that the Confederate flag is “the ultimate symbol of white heteropatriarchal capitalism,” and that “Whiteness is most certainly and inevitably terror.” She also retweeted a Tweet declaring that”the USA flag stands for the same thing as the confederate flag.”

About an hour ago, the University of Memphis tweeted the following:

Zandria Robinson is no longer employed by the University of Memphis.

— UofMemphis (@uofmemphis) June 30, 2015

Early this month Robinson was criticized by the conservative website Campus Reform for her comments on Facebook directed at those who believe “that students of color will simply get into graduate programs because they are racial or ethnic minorities,” as well as for tweets about whiteness and racism.

I have reached out to the university for clarification of their tweet. I will update when and if I receive a response.

Update | Worth noting that Robinson’s research field is the sociology of race, specifically blackness as it intersects with popular culture. She was employed as an assistant professor at the U of Memphis, where she received her MA, for three years.

Second Update | The original version of this post said that Professor Robinson was “apparently fired” — given the tone and timing of the university’s announcement, that seemed the most likely explanation for their tweet. Now, however, multiple people on Twitter, including a guy who seems to be her husband, are indicating that Robinson left voluntarily and has taken another job.

I put a request for comment into the university president when I first posted, and I will continue to follow up.

Third Update | If, as it increasingly appears, Zandria Robinson quit the U of Memphis for a more congenial job, then today’s tweet from her former employer — and their subsequent silence — was incredibly churlish and vindictive. The tweet was constructed to leave the impression that she was fired, and that she was fired for her social media posts. The effect of that is to hype up her attackers, poison the well at her new job, and ratchet up other scholars’ fears.

And this not merely from her employer of three years, but from her alma mater as well. Way to treat an alum, guys.

July 2 Update | The University of Memphis responded to my request for comment yesterday, confirming what Robinson had already stated through friends — that “Dr. Robinson no longer works at the University of Memphis and has accepted a position at another University.” It provided no reply to my query as to whether she had left voluntarily.

July 3 Update | Rhodes College in Memphis, a small private liberal arts college serving a primarily white student body, has announced that Robinson has taken a position at their institution. Their statement on the hiring described Robinson as “a leading scholar and author in the areas of race, class, gender, culture, and the South” whose public statements “are sometimes provocative, controversial, and debatable.” It lauded her “expertise in…gender studies and social movements,” as well as “her extensive understanding of the complex problems of race in American society, her deep roots in the Memphis area, and many years of successful teaching experience.”

The statement goes on to note that Robinson taught at Rhodes in 2008-09, when she “was well received by students,” and that “throughout her academic career, she has consistently demonstrated a commitment to mentor all students.

It concludes as follows:

“Dr. Robinson has an extensive and impressive body of scholarship that provides clarity and context to the sound bite world of social media. This situation ultimately shines a light on Rhodes as a place where intellectual engagement and the exchange of ideas are among our highest priorities.”

A few years ago, some academics did a study of racial attitudes in small children. They wanted to find out whether generic assurances that everyone’s the same on the inside — the standard white liberal catechism of racial good feeling — actually make a difference in whether kids turn into bigots.

They don’t.

Telling your kid that everyone’s the same, that nobody’s better than anyone else, that everybody’s friends with everybody, accomplishes nothing. You can say that kind of stuff all day and all night — and believe me, white liberal parents do — but if that’s all you do, when a researcher sits your kid down and asks your kid whether black people are as nice or as smart or as pretty or as good as white people, they’re going to get answers that are going to make you cringe.

Because there’s bigotry floating around in the air in our society. Not anywhere near as much as there used to be, but a lot. And your kid is going to pick that up. And if that’s all your kid picks up, it’s going to stick.

So if you’re a white parent who wants your kid to not turn into a casually creepy bigot at the age of six, you need to talk about race. You need to tell your kid about racism. You need to be the first to explain racism to your kid, before that bigotry floating around in the air has a chance to land on them.

You need to say that some horrible people think that black people aren’t as nice, as smart, as pretty, as good as white people. You need to say that those people are horrible, and that they’re wrong. You need to say that people like those people — white people like those people — used to be in charge in a lot of places, but that nice, smart, good people (some, but not all, of them pretty) fought against them in the courts and on the streets and changed the rules so that the horrible people wouldn’t always win.

You need to tell them about Dr. King and Rosa Parks and Ella Baker, and you need to tell them about Bill Moore and Viola Liuzzo and Chaney and Schwerner and Goodman. You need to tell them about Frederick Douglass and John Brown and Sojurner Truth and Denmark Vesey.

On our way to Niagara Falls a few summers ago, I took my kids to Harriet Tubman’s house in Auburn NY to learn about the Underground Railroad, and to Frederick Douglass’s grave. Two years later I took them to John Brown’s homestead.

I don’t want my kids to be bigots.

I don’t want my kids to be bigots, and that’s not all. I want my kids to be fighting against the bigots. And I don’t just want them fighting, I want them winning. And so I started arming them for that fight before they were out of preschool. Because that’s what you need to do.

Those of you reading this who are parents, talk to your kids. Those of you who are going to be parents, start thinking now about how you’re going to talk to your kids, when they get here. Those of you who are siblings, talk to your brothers and sisters. Those of you who are children, talk to your parents. Talk to your friends. Talk to your teachers. Talk to your professors.

Talk. Talk. Tell them what you know. Tell them what you believe. Tell them what you’ve learned.

Don’t let them walk around not knowing.

This is a post I’ll be adding a lot of updates to, I suspect.

As of this evening, five members of the Cooper Union board of trustees have resigned. They did not go quietly.

From the letter of resignation of Mark Epstein, the former chair of the board:

As a Trustee, I am hereby resigning from the Board, effective immediately. During my term as Chairman we were able to put the school on a path to sustainability. It was going to be a difficult path with some hurdles to get over. We were on our way, but have now gotten so far off of that path due to the actions (or inactions) of the Board that I no longer want to participate. I know that there are some in the Cooper Community that will take my resignation as a false victory of some sort. I am not resigning due to any pressure from that group, rather that I no longer want to associate with them.

As a donor, I am withdrawing my financial support for the college. Although I respect the rights of those of the faculty, alumni, and students, to act as they see fit, I no longer want to support them.

If the schools fail in the future, it will not be due to the change in the scholarship policy (a major part of the sustainability plan) as some will claim. It will be due to the organized opposition to it.

This is … extraordinary.

“I no longer want to participate.” “Some will take my resignation as a false victory.” “I no longer want to associate with them.” “I am withdrawing my financial support.” “If the schools fail, it will not be due to [the imposition of tuition] as some will claim. It will be due to the organized opposition to it.”

On the internet, we call that a flounce.

The context for this resignation — and those of the other four trustees who left today — is the ongoing struggle over the future of Cooper Union. A series of deeply questionable financial decisions led the trustees to impose tuition at Cooper for the first time not long ago, leading to massive student and alumni protests and an investigation of institutional mismanagement by the state’s Attorney General. This spring the trustees offered to depose widely-despised Cooper Union president Jamshed Bharucha in hopes of resolving the AG’s probe.

The trustees who resigned today were supporters of Bharucha and nemeses of the student and alumni activists.

Daniel Libeskind was another of the trustees who quit today. Here’s a quote from his resignation letter:

I do not support the leadership and direction of this Board.  I believe that decisions being taken are not in the best interest of Cooper Union.

So here’s the thing about Daniel Libeskind, a prominent celebrity architect — two months ago he went to the Wall Street Journal to complain at length about the state of the Cooper trustees. Trustee deliberations and actions were supposed to be held mostly in confidence, but Libeskind ignored that mandate while excoriating others for sharing much more minor tidbits.

Cooper Union was tuition-free for well over a century. That changed a mere seventeen months ago. Among the trustees who resigned today were some of the staunchest supporters of charging tuition. I’m not saying that these resignations mean that the tuition policy is about to be reversed — honestly, I’m not saying that. But that policy has carried an air of inevitability and inexorability since well before it was formally implemented, and now … well, let’s just say it’s hard to know what’s inevitable now.

“I am withdrawing my financial support from the college.” I mean, it’s one thing to stop donating. It’s quite another to announce that you’re going to stop donating, and to do so in your resignation letter.

The word that keeps coming to my mind is petulant.

As I write this, it’s almost 11:30 pm. Word of the trustees’ resignation hit Twitter at 6:35 pm — nearly five hours ago. But there’s not a single word about the story at any news outlet, or (as far as I can tell) at any of the other blogs that have been covering this story.

Oh, and one more thing. Mark Epstein, who today said that he is “withdrawing [his] financial support from Cooper Union” because he doesn’t support the policies of the majority of the CU trustees, said this in 2011:

“If [alumni] are that pissed off about Cooper Union and don’t want to give back, then I suggest they give back their degrees. You I mean, how do you answer a question like this: why don’t people give back to a school that gave them a free education worth now a hundred-some-odd thousand dollars? To me it’s baffling, it truly is.”

And yes, Epstein is a Cooper Union grad.

It’s baffling. It truly is.

Update | I’ve fleshed out this post with more context and more links, but there’s still nothing in the media about this extraordinary story. I expect the next shoe will drop with a bang, though — I’ll keep you posted here and on Twitter when it does.

Second Update | Brian Boucher at Artnet has a thorough story up on the resignations, adding the detail that the Cooper trustees have a meeting scheduled for today.

Third Update | News coverage of yesterday’s resignations has been trickling in all day, and I’ll have more to say about that soon. But first, here’s the other shoe: Jamshed Bharucha just announced his resignation as president of Cooper, effective as of the end of this month. The resignation letter says he will take up a position as a visiting scholar at Harvard in the fall. A statement from the Cooper Union trustees says that vice president for finance and administration William Mea will serve as interim president until a new president is chosen, and that the search committee for Bharucha’s replacement “will include representation from the faculty, students and alumni.”

Mea served in various administrative roles at three different universities before joining Cooper Union last September.

Fourth Update | The Wall Street Journal has the most thorough story on yesterday’s resignations to appear so far, and the only one to include an interview with one of the outgoing trustees. In that piece, Mark Epstein says that the board’s efforts earlier this year to nudge Bharucha out were “a terrible move,” and that “Jamshed was the right person to lead the school going forward.”

The WSJ story also includes a quote from a representative of the Attorney General, who says that while their investigation of Cooper is “still ongoing,” the AG office is “pleased that recent discussions with members of the board and school community have been both cooperative and productive.”

Fifth Update | The WSJ story has been updated with news of Bharucha’s resignation, and with a quote from Teresa Dahlberg, the Cooper Union chief academic officer, who resigned last month after two years on the job. “The Cooper Union Board of Trustees has been dysfunctional, with various factions supporting contrary goals,” she said. “Until board leadership is able to unite the board, no person serving as president will be able to unite the community.”

The eagerness of those who wound up on the losing side of this struggle to salt the earth behind them as they leave Cooper Union is remarkable and ugly.