Trigger warnings on Harry Potter by Chester University doing a 'disservice to students'

Students are being done a "disservice" over trigger warnings placed on books such as Harry Potter at universities, an education minister has said.

Universities minister Michelle Donelan said there is a need for “common sense” over the issue of institutions such as the University of Chester placing warnings about content on JK Rowling’s stories.

But, the University of Chester has always denied literature students are being warned that "difficult conversations" could arise from specifically reading the first Harry Potter book.

Ms Donelan said: "Harry Potter is actually a children’s book. Fundamentally it is probably a multimillion-pound industry that has been franchised into films.

"To say that we need to protect some of our brightest and our best from the likes of Harry Potter is to not only do our universities a disservice but to do our students a disservice.

"And it’s not the way to ensure that they can enter the world having those skills at their fingertips - the ability to challenge, to be critically astute - and that’s certainly not the interpretation that I’d had talking to students, that they want or they need this from their universities," she added.

In January the Times reported the English department at the University of Chester had issued an alert that Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone could raise issues about "gender, race, sexuality, class, and identity."

Freshers are required to read the book for their Approaches To Literature module, which also includes trigger warnings for Northern Lights by Philip Pullman and Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games.

The newspaper said the advice appears in an online handbook beneath a list of the three set texts the first year students must read.

It says: "Although we are studying a selection of young adult texts on this module, the nature of the theories we apply to them can lead to some difficult conversations about gender, race, sexuality, class, and identity.

"These topics will be treated objectively, critically, and most crucially, with respect. If anyone has any issues with the content, please get in touch with the module leader to make them aware."

Ms Donelan said “students have to be able to live in the real world once they graduate university”.

"There are no trigger warnings every day as you operate. I’ve not met students who have called for these trigger warnings either," she said.

"They are not the issues that students are bringing up to me – they’re bringing up sexual harassment, they’re bringing up antisemitism."

Ms Donelan said for universities that have not yet signed up to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, it "makes you question whether they are getting their priorities right", adding that universities should focus on tackling harassment and antisemitism rather than looking at trigger warnings on content.

"I think their priorities, fundamentally, should be the welfare, the wellbeing and the education of students," she said.

The Times says the warning at the bottom of the module is not featured on any other reading lists, including works by Shakespeare, Arthur Conan Doyle and Charlotte Brontë.

However, the University of Chester says the paragraph was “generic rather than specific to the three texts".

A spokesman previously said: "Those studying literature should expect to encounter all the issues, challenges and complexity of humankind. As a university we promote rather than avoid discussion on these.

"We do, of course, include a generic paragraph on our reading lists to draw attention to the opportunity for individual students to talk with tutors if anything is particularly difficult because of its personal relevance.

"Tutors know how to signpost students to specialist support which is occasionally needed, but often the tutorial or seminar discussion is sufficient for a student to put an issue in context.

"For further clarification the Department agreed a standard form of words for Level 4 students (usually joining from school or college).

"The module picked out uses this generic text and an additional paragraph just to reiterate that young adult texts can also prompt important conversations."