A WOKE university made an elementary mistake by slapping a trigger warning on a Sherlock Holmes murder mystery.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s thriller The Hound of the Baskervilles was declared “emotionally and intellectually challenging” by soft-touch dons at East Anglia University.
English literature scholars were warned that the 1902 book, the third Sherlock Holmes novel, contained “violence and murder”.
Module leaders said students may also be triggered by discussions of the plot’s relationship with “gender, sexuality and race” in classes.
The story, in which Holmes and sidekick John Watson must solve the curse of a supernatural hound haunting Dartmoor, is one of nine branded with the same warning in a module called “The Art of Murder”.
Others on the list include Attica Locke’s Black Water Rising and Seishi Yokomizo’s 1946 thriller The Honjin Murders.
In a bizarre booklet given to students, professors warned: “This module explores subjects such as violence, murder, and sexual assault, which some students may find distressing.
“Discussions of gender, sexuality and race will also feature as part of the teaching content.
“Some of this may be emotionally and intellectually challenging to engage with.
“I will flag especially graphic or intense content and will do my best to make this classroom a space where we can engage bravely, empathetically, and thoughtfully with difficult content every week.”
Free Speech Union founder Toby Young said: “If you’re studying a module called ’The Art of Murder’, you don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out that the books you’ll be reading with contain ‘violence and murder’.
“If you require a trigger warning to alert you to that fact, maybe a university education isn’t for you.”
In response to a Freedom of Information request, the uni said the warning was “used to inform students about potentially distressing or triggering content before they engage with it.”
They were asked to comment further.
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