A growing group of Columbia University undergraduates are calling for an overhaul to the school’s required reading list and asking whether classics with sexually violent content should bear cautionary notes.

The effort to add “trigger warnings” to texts has polarized universities around the U.S. At the New York City Ivy League school, it is focused on an introductory humanities course, “Masterpieces of Western Literature and Philosophy,” that all undergraduates at Columbia College take.

...