Universities have started removing books from reading lists to protect students from “challenging” content and have applied trigger warnings to more than 1,000 texts, a Times investigation has found.
Ten universities, including three from the Russell Group, have withdrawn books from course study lists, or made them optional, in case they cause students harm.
The texts include the 2017 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead, which has been “removed permanently” from a course reading list at Essex University because of concerns about graphic depictions of slavery.
The classic play Miss Julie, by August Strindberg, has been withdrawn from an English literature module at Sussex University because it includes discussion of suicide.
English students at Aberdeen University are also told they
