The list of trigger warnings is seemingly never-ending. From Jane Eyre to Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, the first encounters university students have with new texts are likely to be warnings about their content. Rather than asking why a young generation of budding intellectuals have such a bad reputation for controlling their emotions (or why university students are reading Harry Potter books at all), many academics seem willing to play along with trigger warnings. To criticise trigger warnings today is tantamount to outing yourself as a sadist, intent on causing emotional damage to hordes of unsuspecting youngsters.

But criticise them we should. Trigger warnings are terrible for many reasons. They sanitise our authentic experiences and emotions – reading of the brutal murder of Nancy at the hands and club of Bill Sikes is supposed to make you recoil. They also give credence to the narcissistic idea that young people should link everything they read back to their own experiences, rather than embracing a universal outlook. This philistine approach to learning will do nothing for a young generation of scholars. University is, after all, supposed to be about opening your mind.

Perhaps most importantly, trigger warnings assume that the response of the most outraged and most sensitive should carry the most weight and should inform the kind of art and literature we make in the future. They suggest there is something wrong, immoral or even dangerous about having challenging content in art. This poses a real danger to the future of artistic freedom.