来源：《华盛顿邮报》
原文刊登日期：2023年4月29日
faculty这个词在文中出现多次，它有两个词义：一是大学教职工；二是大学院系。
In March, a Cornell University sophomore and member of the undergraduate student assembly saw a friend become visibly disturbed while reading “The Surrendered,” a Chang-rae Lee novel with a graphic rape scene. So she spearheaded a resolution that “implores all instructors to provide content warnings on the syllabus for any traumatic content that may be discussed.”
今年3月，康奈尔大学的一名大二学生兼本科生大会成员看到一位朋友在阅读李昌来的小说《投降者》时明显感到不安，小说中有强奸场景。因此，她率先提出了一项决议，“恳请所有教师在教学大纲上对可能讨论的任何创伤性内容提供内容警告。”
On the surface, this story has all the features of a wider phenomenon increasingly prevalent on American university campuses: the curtailing of academic inquiry, and sometimes even free speech, for the protection of perceived student “sensitivities” — invisible boundaries whose contours are never quite clear but almost always couched as barriers against “harm.” What happened next is cause for celebration: The Cornell administration immediately struck down this resolution, a welcome reminder that academic institutions have the power to defend their fundamental values — and are willing to use it.
从表面上看，这个故事具有美国大学校园中日益普遍的一种更广泛现象的所有特征：为了保护学生的“敏感”，限制学术探究，有时甚至限制言论自由——这些无形的界限的轮廓从来都不太清楚，但几乎总是被粉饰成防止“伤害”的屏障。接下来发生的事情值得庆祝：康奈尔大学管理层立即否决了这项决议，这是一个可喜的提醒，提醒人们学术机构有权力捍卫自己的基本价值观——而且愿意使用这个权力。
“We cannot accept this resolution as the actions it recommends would infringe on our core commitment to academic freedom and freedom of inquiry, and are at odds with the goals of a Cornell education,” wrote Cornell’s president, Martha E. Pollack, in a letter rejecting the student assembly’s plea for trigger warnings. Although she did note that “in some cases faculty may wish to provide notice,” an outright trigger warning requirement, she noted, “would have a chilling effect on faculty, who would naturally fear condemnation lest they bring a discussion spontaneously into new and challenging territory, or fail to accurately anticipate students’ reaction to a topic or idea.”
康奈尔大学校长玛莎·波拉克在一封信中写道：“我们不能接受这项决议，因为它建议的行动会违反我们对学术自由和研究自由的核心承诺，也与康奈尔大学的教育目标不符”。她拒绝了学生大会提出的全面提供触发警告的请求。尽管她确实注意到，“在某些情况下，教师可能希望发出这样的通知”，但她指出，全面提供触发警告的要求“会对教师产生寒蝉效应，他们自然会害怕受到谴责，担心他们将讨论自发地带入新的、具有挑战性的领域，或者无法准确预测学生对某个话题或想法的反应。”
Across the country, a growing number of administrations and faculties at universities both private and public alike are beginning to do the same, waking up to the realization that academic freedom needs to be protected, and that student outrage on social media should not dictate university policy.
在全美范围内，越来越多的私立和公立大学的行政部门和教师也开始这样做，他们意识到学术自由需要得到保护，学生在社交媒体上的愤怒不应该左右大学的政策。
It’s true, of course, that the social justice movement in general has brought a much-needed change in perspective to the American academy, inspiring faculties to expand course offerings and hiring committees to seek out scholars from diverse backgrounds. But those changes, all necessary efforts to make more students feel welcome on campuses, have sometimes gone hand in hand with limits on what can be said, questioned or even written in university settings.
当然，总体而言，社会正义运动确实给美国高等院校带来了急需的视角变化，激励大学院系扩大课程设置，聘请委员会寻找来自不同背景的学者。但是，这些变化，所有让更多学生感到受欢迎的必要努力，有时也会同时限制在大学环境中可以说什么、质疑什么，甚至写什么。
According to “The Academic Mind in 2022: What Faculty Think About Free Expression and Academic Freedom on Campus,” a national survey of approximately 1,500 faculty members at four-year colleges and universities conducted by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, one third of those polled feel they cannot express their opinions based on potential reaction from other members of their university communities — while more than half expressed concern about being fired because of someone misunderstanding a comment.
根据《2022年的学术思想：教师对校园言论自由和学术自由的看法》，一项由个人权利和言论基金会对大约1500名四年制学院和大学的教师进行的全国性调查显示，三分之一的受访者认为，基于大学社区其他成员的潜在反应，他们无法表达自己的观点，超过一半的受访者表示担心因为有人误解了他们的评论而被解雇。