Safety as an evolving concept: campus invited to participate in community discussion

Brandeis Stories

Safety as an evolving concept: campus invited to participate in community discussion

By Steve Foskett
September 22, 2026 • General

Changing attitudes about higher education, shifting demographics, and new, evolving ideas about career readiness are challenging campus leaders to adapt or get left behind. But how does an organization as large and complex as the modern university go about changing in a meaningful way?

A new year-long seminar series organized by Professors Sarah Mayorga and Ulka Anjaria will make the case that it all starts with a single concept: safety.

The Sawyer Seminar Series will convene national experts on campus to lead discussions that will also look inward. Exploring the safety question - in broad and nuanced ways - may provide a path forward for that reinvention, Anjaria and Mayorga said.

"This is a moment to think about the purpose of a college classroom," said Anjaria, who is also the Barbara Mandel Professor of Humanities. "What do we want our students to take away from their university education into the world?"

Mayorga, the Jacob S. Potofsky Professor of Sociology, said the series, which will offer seminars and community forums featuring public intellectuals, safety experts, Brandeis administration, faculty, and staff, and students, will seek to establish a shared understanding of the very definition of safety. Traditional perceptions of what makes a safe campus - things like locked doors and well-lit spaces, police presence, or even discussion guidelines for civil debate in a classroom and protest outside of it - can quickly open themselves up to wide interpretation.

The new series seeks to unearth what's in those in-between spaces.

"If a student says, 'I don't feel safe,' that's a really important thing that they shouldn't feel," Anjaria said. "But we also want to figure out what they mean by that. What are the different threats to safety?"

"This is a moment to think about the purpose of a college classroom. What do we want our students to take away from their university education into the world?"

Ulka Anjaria, professor of English and Barbara Mandel Professor of Humanities

A large part of the series will look at safety within the context of academic freedom and a free exchange of ideas. That means making space for difficult conversations in which there can be deep disagreement. Mayorga said part of the series will examine how conflict is not inherently unsafe, and consensus is not necessarily always the goal.

"Conflict can be really productive, and that's one of the core values we're holding onto for the seminar," Mayorga said. "Not to avoid it, but rather to try to understand it deeply."

The Sawyer Seminar series and community forums start in September and run through April of next year. The project will produce both Brandeis-specific recommendations and will offer a way forward for the larger higher education community.

"We hope that through these conversations, which cross the borders of disciplines, of theory and practice, and of faculty and administration, we can generate new imaginations of safety for our community," Anjaria said.

• The first community forum, from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 8, in Shapiro Campus Center, is a student-led discussion about the purpose of a college classroom.
• Other panels in the series will discuss how universities can foster belonging; teaching polarizing topics, reimagining public safety by looking at policing and its alternatives, and reimagining job safety. Michael Roth, president of Wesleyan University, will lead a "Remaking the University" discussion in March.

Mayorga said student involvement and feedback will be a critical component of the series, and could eventually help shape policies at Brandeis and beyond.

"We want to know what Brandeis students think," she said. "What challenges get in the way of curiosity, honest conversations, and productive disagreement in the classroom? What are faculty and students doing right, and what could they do better?"