University campuses strive to maintain cultures where students engage meaningfully across lines of difference. Over the past 15 years, it has become increasingly common to hear students citing their experiences as abusive, as a reason for refusing to participate in discussions or expressing a desire to shut down the conversation.
Some examples to consider: A college student in a Middle Eastern studies class refuses to finish an assignment on Israeli-Palestinian relations because the content is “provocative.” Another student suddenly walks out of an ethics class where the topic is the use of animals in medical research. One student, upon learning that there will be a campus debate on gun control and the Second Amendment, organizes a protest in the area, disrupting it to the point where the debate cannot continue. How should professors and administrators respond when students say that academic discussions are so dangerous or disturbing that they need to leave, or that the content should not be allowed on campus?
Such incidents may prompt teachers to question whether the damage is “real,” but this is the wrong question. Asking whether distress is real enough to warrant action locks us into a counterproductive, counterproductive debate about the validity of students’ emotional experiences. A better question is whether the only response for them is to shut themselves down or shut others down—an approach that denies students engagement and resilience. Instead, we argue for modeling and supporting an agentic perspective that acknowledges discomfort while increasing students’ sense of what responses are available to them.
The Agent Mindset
Faculty responses to students’ concerns about engaging with things they find disturbing generally fall into two camps. Those in the first camp argue that students are unable to be resilient because of lifelong incarceration and tend to label daily struggles as tragic or traumatic when they are not. This may lead to the idea that we should not take these concerns seriously, that students should attend classes or events that include this content or face the consequences.
The second camp says that students’ claims of trauma, stress, discomfort or abuse necessitate a response at the university level. This may take the form of “deployment warnings,” policies that allow readers to avoid content without consequence or even banning sensitive content altogether. Although they have very different views, these camps share something in common in that each determines whether an experience can or should be coded as disturbing or traumatic enough to warrant action.
We reject this dichotomy. Little will be gained by challenging students’ claims that they have been traumatized or harmed, or their concerns that educational content or experiences may be traumatic or harmful. However, that does not mean that we should engage in a narrative of helplessness or victimization that denies or dismisses students’ ability to respond strongly, powerfully. When we do this, we communicate to students that they are powerless, that they can’t (or can’t learn) to control their emotions and that there are people, situations and topics they can’t handle.
What we can challenge, however, is the idea that the only response to the discomfort, stress, pain, fear or anger they experience is to silence their voices or those of others, or that they need a “protective” response from management. Instead, we can work to change their minds about what is happening and what options are available to them. This change is powerful, because mindset serves as the lens through which people interpret their experience and guide their behavior. When students view challenging content as something they cannot handle, they experience it as threatening and respond by avoiding or shutting down. When they view the same content as challenging but manageable—as an opportunity to practice discussing ideas they find troubling—various responses become possible. Behavior flows from how we interpret our situations.
This is why mindset is often the focus of psychotherapy. Therapists recognize that helping clients reframe their perspectives and situations can be transformative. However, what we recommend here should not be mistaken as a cure, and professors must be careful not to become armchair experts. What we recommend is more modest and more appropriate in an educational context: to model and strengthen an attitude of performance and competence instead of weakness and impotence.
This approach does not prevent students from real support when they need it. Students with diagnosed conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder or clinical anxiety disorders deserve reasonable accommodations, just as students with disabilities do. But there is an important difference between providing individual support through appropriate channels and treating discomfort itself as a warrant for institutional protection for all students. Our concern is the latter—with the growing expectation that universities should protect students from content as difficult as it is.
As educators, we have a responsibility to meet students where they are, provide the skills and resources to get them where we want to be, and help them face challenges head-on, both in college and beyond. Although there are many behavioral and emotional self-control strategies that can be taught to students to help them cope with intense emotional experiences in the classroom, the truth is that many professors do not have the time or desire to learn them so that they can reliably deliver them to their students. So we offer a simple but powerful way to support such students—modeling and supporting an agent mindset.
3 Step Method
This means three things. First, it requires setting the expectation that scholarship is uncomfortable, that it’s OK to feel uncomfortable, and that they’re in college to do uncomfortable things, including regularly meeting and engaging with ideas they find oppressive or offensive. This means that universities are like gymnasiums, where students get stronger by pushing themselves, and work their intellectual muscles. They are not comfortable homes for rest and relaxation.
Second, it is important to acknowledge students’ discomfort in a way that makes them feel heard. Few people—students included—will respond to feedback or demands if they feel ostracized. Acknowledgment can be as simple as, “I understand that this is really bothering you.” Professionals do not need to understand or relate to a particular depression—or assume the role of a therapist—to empathize with someone who is struggling.
Third, explain the importance of participating in the work despite the discomfort they may feel. This should be a natural teaching moment for the professor. Professors assign work because they believe that it produces significant benefits for students and that students can cope with it. And by freely engaging with the issues themselves, including sharing their discomfort with difficult questions, professors are modeling the very nature they are asking students to develop.
Doing these three simple things—setting expectations, empathizing and defining value—helps remind students of the purpose of university, their ability to face challenging situations, the importance of practice and doing difficult things, and their agency in making decisions that empower them to learn and grow. Even choosing to let go of an unpleasant experience is a choice if it is a choice, rather than something they believe they cannot do. As students encounter such experiences throughout their college careers, trying and failing, practicing and succeeding, they develop a sense of self-efficacy, independence and resilience that will facilitate their interactions with the university and the world beyond.
