"Contrary to the tradition of free inquiry, many college students now demand the suppression of ideas they find offensive. As if to raise the stakes by transforming the issues in play into medical ones, many also claim that such ideas traumatize them. Implying as it does that offensive material doesn’t just insult decency or pollute the public realm but wounds the very psyche of those exposed to it, the term “trauma” as deployed by the critics of free inquiry has indeed taken the argument to a new level. What are we to make of the contention that students are so vulnerable that the syllabus of a lit course should carry a “trigger warning” to the effect that their psyches might suffer damage merely as a result of the reading?" - Quilette

"According to the medical literature, we have here a case of mass psychogenic illness (or mass hysteria): a social phenomenon in which people suddenly fall ill, and inspire others to do so as well, in the belief that they have been exposed to a toxic agent, though in fact the belief itself is making them sick. Such an outbreak poses a spurious emergency." ?