By Lawrence M. Zacarese
Higher education risk professionals, particularly those with responsibility for campus risk, safety, and security, must heed the warning: your jobs have significantly changed and gotten incredibly challenging. Those not adjusting their proverbial sails to the changing winds could be left in a storm that they are unprepared for with no safe port nearby. The traditional models will no longer work, since the blueprints are unusable and the cracks in the foundation are beginning to show.
Gone are the days when myopic strategies and traditional, reactive approaches to perceived, predictable campus risks are enough. Organizational silos and the lack of a comprehensive, unified methodology for safety and protection should be considered non-starters and unacceptable to boards and senior executives.
Gone are the days when myopic strategies and traditional, reactive approaches to perceived, predictable campus risks are enough. Organizational silos and the lack of a comprehensive, unified methodology for safety and protection should be considered non-starters and unacceptable to boards and senior executives.
Inculcating a Culture of Resilience
Organizational resilience is the organization’s capability to face disruptions and unexpected events in advance, thanks to the strategic awareness and a linked operational management of internal and external shocks (Alessandro Annarelli, 2016). This mindset requires not only an institutional understanding, acceptance, and prioritization of an enterprise risk management culture, but also a commitment to connecting strategic planning and operational management throughout the organization.
Planning for disruptions, while not allowing unknown risks to become obstacles to progress, is the essence of resilience. We expect untoward events to occur but embrace them as opportunities, not encumbrances. “Known unknowns” and “unknown unknowns,”a distinction made by former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, describe the differences between threats that are understood and common (e.g., hurricanes, floods, or petty thefts on campus) and those more asymmetric and akin to Black Swan events (e.g., 9/11 or an extremely sophisticated cyber-attack) (Arjen Boin, 2017).
Risk professionals must empower their teams to adopt a forward-looking, resilient mindset and become ambassadors of the philosophy, seizing every opportunity within their professional practice to explain the importance of this approach to their colleagues. An anecdotal measure of this success occurs when the terms risk and resilience become common vernacular, particularly in rooms or meetings that the risk professionals are not in. For these approaches to succeed, senior executive buy-in and visible, consistent top-down support are key components for what can be dubbed a campuswide “resiliency refocus” initiative.
The Evolving Artificial Intelligence (AI) Risks
While the topic of artificial intelligence (AI) is now more commonplace on campuses—in the classroom, research labs, and in administrative offices—the discipline first gained real prominence in early 1950 when Alan Turing posed the question, “Can machines think?” In 2025, we have evolved significantly from asking machines to choose numbers or identify codes or patterns, and into a world where generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is being used maliciously.
Through a cloak of anonymity (often with the use of fake accounts or proxy internet routing techniques), malicious actors are more commonly using deepfake videos and altered images to spread misinformation, enhance the sophistication of swatting incidents (Hattersley, 2025) and proliferate doxing efforts against faculty and staff (Whitford, 2025).
Policies and procedures that govern the use of AI in the classroom for academic purposes are essential, as are the governance structures. Unfortunately, those aiming to weaponize the technology don’t follow those rules. Risk, safety, and security administrators must maintain close and collaborative relationships with their information and cybersecurity colleagues. Vigilant monitoring of campus networks and a robust system to identify and respond to threats derived from these methods are crucial to the success of risk mitigation. Leaders need to encourage and support technology that augments existing systems and processes while also remaining keenly aware of what the next great tools may be.
"Words matter. In a crisis, they matter even more, but so does the speed at which they are shared, the accuracy with which they express their message, and their underlying empathy and tone."
Crisis Communication: A Mitigation Strategy
Words matter. In a crisis, they matter even more, but so does the speed at which they are shared, the accuracy with which they express their message, and their underlying empathy and tone. While not unheard of, close alignment and coordination between an institution’s communication apparatus and its risk managers is not necessarily the norm in higher education. For example:
Who is authorized to speak on behalf of the institution? (This is a question that many colleges and universities cannot easily answer.)
In an emergency, is there a ready-made list of who can send emergency messages, activate lockdown protocols, speak to the media, issue statements, and update social media accounts?
Are there prepared templates or playbooks that can be modified in real time with pertinent details to alert campus members quickly during times of crises, and, perhaps more importantly, have they been tested in advance during tabletop exercises and emergency drills?
These questions are crucial; and spending the time as a leadership team, or directing those responsible to spend time answering these questions, is a worthy investment in analyzing the current organizational structure and interplay between the communications and risk teams.
Further, leveraging technological systems and applications to ensure adequate social listening and open-source information gathering are no longer tools only used by corporate or government entities. Strategic brand protection and reputational risk management are core tenets of a wide-ranging crisis communication strategy that, when integrated into the overall resilience-minded posture of the institution, serve as force multipliers for cohesive risk reduction.
Forward to The Future
The contemporary risk environment confronting institutions is complex and unpredictable. Traditional compartmentalized approaches to risk management are insufficient to address the multifaceted threats that now encompass operational, technological, environmental, and reputational domains. The imperative is to cultivate strategic resilience and comprehensive frameworks that enable colleges and universities to anticipate, absorb, and adapt to disruptions.
This resilience should be institutionally embedded within governance structures, operational planning, and organizational culture to ensure sustained adaptability and continuity. This includes fostering cross-functional collaboration among administrative, academic, and operational units and leveraging data analytics and scenario modeling to inform decision-making. Moreover, it necessitates a shift from reactive crisis management toward proactive capacity building.
Ultimately, strategic resilience represents both a philosophical and an operational commitment to institutional sustainability in an era defined by continual transformation and uncertainty.
Alessandro Annarelli, F.N. (2016). Strategic and operational management of organizational resilience: Current state of research and future directions. Omega, 1-18.
Arjen Boin, P.T. (2017). The Politics of Crisis Management: Public Leadership Under Pressure. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.
Hattersley, R. (2025, September 12). Campus Safety Magazine. Retrieved from https://www.campussafetymagazine.com/: https://www.campussafetymagazine.com/news/surge-in-swattingincidents-u-s-colleges-continue-to-be-targeted-by-false-active-shooter-reports/173172/
Turing, A. (1950). Computing Machinery and Intelligence. Mind 49, 433-460.
Whitford, E. (2025, September 19). https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty-issues/academicfreedom/2025/09/19/right-wing-doxing-campaign-endangers-faculty-and. Retrieved from Inside Higher Ed: https://www.insidehighered.com/