A university has issued a trigger warning for Ian Fleming’s classic James Bond novel, “Dr. No,” alerting students to its themes of racism and xenophobia via The Telegraph.
In this sixth installment of the Bond series, the story follows 007 as he investigates the disappearance of two fellow MI6 agents in Jamaica. The antagonist is Dr. Julius No, a Chinese-German mad scientist who operates a guano mine on the fictional island of Crab Key.
With steel pincers for hands, the villain was later portrayed in the first Bond film, released in 1962 and sharing the same title as Fleming’s novel, featuring Sean Connery as James Bond.
However, “academic killjoys” at the University of Portsmouth have deemed Fleming’s portrayal of the main antagonist and other characters as “problematic”, warning the book contains instances of “racism and xenophobia”
It has placed trigger warnings on more than 50 texts from reading lists on its English Literature degree, including Dr No, which is on the course’s Popular Culture module.
The university states: “Please note: James Bond films and novels are popular to this day but contain many problematic issues such as racism, misogyny and xenophobia.
“We will be discussing the problems with this text in all of our seminars.”
The university states that it does not use content warnings; instead, it encourages students to engage with teaching materials in an informed manner by providing content notes. In 2023, Ian Fleming Publications announced the removal of racist slurs and discriminatory references from the republication of the Bond books, commemorating the 70th anniversary of the release of Fleming’s first novel, ‘Casino Royale’.
Professor Dennis Hayes, director of the Academics For Academic Freedom group, criticised the warning.
He said: “Putting warnings on James Bond is one of the silliest I have heard of.
“The novels are well-written, exciting thrillers, but academic killjoys will only focus on the political issues in which they are interested. I hope tutors in the seminars also celebrate the best in Bond.
“Students are not children and can see for themselves ‘outdated’ attitudes in works they read. Academics should stop acting like patronising parents.”
Dr Ian Kinane, general editor of the International Journal of James Bond Studies stated that Fleming’s Jamaica-set novels – in particular Live and Let Die, Dr. No, and The Man with the Golden Gun – “contain some of the more egregious instances of racialism within the Bond stories”.
“Recent re-issues of Live and Let Die – perhaps the most complicated if not problematic of his novels when it comes to matters of race and racial identity – have seen the expungement of certain sections of the novel on the grounds of poor taste and outdated language,” he said.
He added he used content warnings with his own students as an acknowledgement of his “awareness of their potential sensitivities”.
He said: “Trigger warnings serve not to cushion students; rather, they cater to potential sensitivities that might arise as a result of exposure to potentially troubling subject matter – either for the very first time in their lives; or, if we are talking about someone with lived experience of a particular trauma, not for the first time.
“Surely it is simply a matter of consideration – not to mention healthy wellbeing practice – on the part of Portsmouth’s lecturing staff to signal for their students the inclusion within Dr. No of certain outmoded language and themes.”
However, Dr Kinane said that erasing references and lines from books was not the best solution, saying the practice “does much to de-historicise the novel by removing it from its cultural contexts”.
He added: “The responsible thing would be to preface the text with a disclaimer, not to expunge passages entirely to pretend they never existed in the first place.”
The English Literature course – which does not have any exams, only assignments and coursework – also has trigger warnings on other texts.
