Cancel Cat in the Hat? Cambridge University Adds Trigger Warnings to Dr Seuss Books

HOLLYWOOD - MARCH 11: Children read from "The Cat in the Hat" book at a ceremony honoring
Vince Bucci/Getty Images
Kurt Zindulka

Thousands of celebrated children’s books, such as Dr Seuss’s The Cat in the Hat, have been branded with trigger warnings by Cambridge University for alleged racism.

A taxpayer-funded project to digitise texts at Cambridge’s Homerton College will be slapping warnings on potentially “harmful” words, phrases, and pictures “relating to slavery, colonialism and racism”.

The woke endeavour is partially being funded by a grant of £80,633 in taxpayer money from the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, according to the Daily Mail.

In a funding pitch for the project, leftist academics said: “Problems are encountered continually with respect to the history of demeaning terms associated with disability and indigenous cultures, as well as the immigrants who have shaped modern America and Britain.

“Trigger warnings, with indications of harmful content for intersectional identities, will protect researchers, children, and general readers from offensiveness or hurt that can emerge in otherwise safe search queries or acts of browsing.”

One of the targets of the iconoclastic project is Dr Theodor Seuss Geisel, the author of the classic Dr Seuss children’s books, claiming that the books contain “overt” examples of blackface and other racially insensitive material.

The cultural landmark book of The Cat in the Hat has long been accused of promoting racism, including by Philip Nel, professor of English at Kansas State University, who accused the main character of mimicking vaudeville blackface, with the cat being based on a black female elevator operator.

The attack on Dr Seuss has ramped up over the past year, particularly in America, after a school district in Virginia banned books from the author in March. The following day, Dr Seuss Enterprises announced that it would refrain from publishing future copies of six of the late author’s works.

President Joe Biden also got in on the act, removing Dr Seuss from the government’s children’s reading initiative, Read Across America Day.

The leftist push seemingly backfired, however, with copies of Suess books accounting for 42 of Amazon’s top 50 “movers and shakers” following the attempt to cancel the author.

Other authors targetted by the Cambridge University review include Laura Ingalls Wilder, for her alleged “stereotypical depictions of Native Americans” in her novel Little House On The Prairie.

The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz writer, L Frank Baum, also drew the ire of the left-wing academics for supposedly promoting “white supremacy” in his children’s bedtime storybook Bandit Jim Crow.

Cambridge has joined forces with the University of Florida to conduct the project jointly, also receiving American taxpayer subsidies through the U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities.

The project aims to analyse over 10,000 books and magazines to highlight authors who have been “offensive to historically enslaved, colonised or denigrated people”.

Under the guise of promoting racial justice following the death of George Floyd in America last year, many universities, educational institutions, and museums have embarked on cancel culture attacks on various supposedly racist targets.

Targets have included Charle’s Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, Sir Issac Newton, sheet music, Medieval English literature, The Queen, and even lessons on tropical viruses, for violating the prohibition of an ever-expanding universe of proscribed people and ideas in the woke era.

Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka

COMMENTS

Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.