REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch

An internationally renowned art expert has been hounded out of his job after he failed to give ‘trigger warnings’ before discussing a fictional rape.

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Michael Bonesteel has taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago for 14 years, and is an expert on the 20th-century Chicago artist Henry Darger.

Bonesteel said that ‘militant LGBT students’ had turned his classroom into something closer to a ‘police state than a place where academic freedom and the open exchange of ideas is valued’.

Bonesteel offered his resignation after three students filed harassment complaints against him for the way he discussed sensitive materials, the Washington Times reports.


The administration responded to the complaints by reducing Bonesteel’s teaching hours.



In one incident, a student complained that Bonesteel didn’t offer a ‘trigger warning’ before using the word ‘rape’ in a discussion of the comic book Batman: The Killing Joke.

Bonesteel said, ‘When I said the word ‘rape,’ the complaining student yelled, “Hey, where’s the trigger warning?”’ A little exasperated by that point, I remarked, ‘Really? You want a trigger warning for the word “rape”?’

In another, a transgender student took issue with a theory that images of little girls with penises in Darger were linked to childhood sexual abuse.

A student complained that Bonesteel didn’t offer ‘trigger warnings’ during a discussion of Alan Moore (Pictured)

Bonesteel said, ‘The student said there was no proof that Darger was sexually abused, and therefore I was wrong in proposing the theory’ – but points out that many experts believe there is substance to the theory.

Bonesteel told the Chicago Reader, ‘To be labeled discriminatory and charged with sexual harassment because I got into a heated debate with a hostile student who happened to be transgender, and for that student’s accusations of sexual harassment to be credited – and for my account and those of several other student witnesses to be discredited – seems entirely unfair.’

SAIC dean of faculty Lisa Wainwright said in a written statement that the college was ‘unable to comment on individual personnel matters.’