During my time teaching English major students at a 2nd tier university in 2002, 2003 and 2004, I was informed not to talk about 4 topics during class by my faculty leader. In addition the program that I came with mentioned that one student in each class would be given the responsibility of being my monitor and submitting reports on the content of my teaching. It was during SARS which was not classified as a sensitive topic back then.
As a professor, you just became used to it and referred questions to those topics to out of class discussions.
Simon Laing <slaing4@gmail.com>