“I really want to be able to discuss polarizing topics,” she said. “But as long as it’s a safe space.”
This common sentiment reflects recent data on students’ attitudes toward speech on campus: a 2024 Knight Foundation study found that 91% of students value free speech as “very important” or "important," while 64% of students believe colleges should offer “safe spaces” on campus, with only 15% opposed.
But what do students really mean by “safe spaces”? Some students use the term to refer to spaces that are physically safe, especially amid growing fears about ICE on campus. Other students use the term to refer to emotional safety, reflecting spaces where authentic conversation on controversial topics is expected, but with rules: no slurs, for example, or no dehumanizing others. Still others feel that, in safe spaces, certain ideas or viewpoints should be forbidden, because of the harm that they cause.
With such a range of definitions, it’s no wonder that the phrase itself has become polarizing. Some view safe spaces as a must, while others view them as a reflection of weakness or lack of resiliency in my generation. Some have proposed “brave spaces” instead, where students are encouraged to speak with courage about controversial issues. As a 2025 college graduate, I often felt intellectual whiplash on Harvard’s campus, between the promotion and decrying of spaces as “safe,” the introduction of new “brave” spaces, and trying to sort out which was which and what meant what.
As someone who spends my new professional career engaged with speech on college campuses, I propose clarifying the term “safety” in this context, with historical precedent.
In 1958, philosopher Isaiah Berlin gave a speech at Oxford entitled “Two Concepts of Liberty.” At the time, Berlin responded to increasingly intense clashes between liberalism, socialism, communism, and other ideologies, each claiming to champion “freedom.” In response, Berlin proposed two frameworks of liberty —negative and positive — aiming to add nuance to the term.
Negative freedom can be described as “freedom from,” as in freedom from restriction. It’s the freedom to do whatever you want, whenever you want, because you are a free person. In contrast, positive freedom is described as “freedom to,” as in, the freedom to have certain entitlements or rights, the retention of which may require some limitations on your negative freedom. For example, because everyone has the right to life, you are not free to murder, and because everyone has the right to free movement, you are not free to evade paying the taxes which fund highways.
This distinction helps resolve conflict between those who view freedom differently. If John were to accuse Sally of being “anti-freedom” for supporting taxes, and Sally in turn called John “anti-freedom” for refusing to contribute to the roads she had the right to travel on, a third party could remind them that in fact they were both “pro-freedom,” but just defined it differently. When someone speaks casually of freedom, they could reasonably be asked, “Do you mean freedom from, or freedom to?”
So how does this all relate to safe spaces? I suggest that the same question, “from, or to?” when applied to the term “safe space,” could have a similarly clarifying and depolarizing effect. When students ask about a safe space, we could ask, “Safe for what?” or “Safe from what?” In doing so, we could better understand their expectations and see how they align with our values. Similarly, when offering “safe spaces,” we could clarify, “This space is safe from non-campus affiliates,” or “This space is safe from slurs.” To step it up a notch, we could even say, “While this space is safe from hateful speech, it is safe for competing viewpoints to be heard and considered.”
Certainly, we cannot 100% control what will be said in a space. But debating whether we should have safe spaces is so ambiguous that it's unproductive. Instead, defining what we mean by them can move the term from a political buzzword to a clarifying statement about what a space is meant to be.
Shira Hoffer is the founding Executive Director of The Viewpoints Project. A 2025 graduate in Social Studies and Religion, she served on Harvard’s Intellectual Vitality Committee for two years, advising and presenting on new strategies for promoting constructive disagreement on campus, and is a practicing mediator in Massachusetts courts. Her senior thesis explored differing campus speech behaviors between religious and secular college students.
