Safe Is Still Not Enough for LGBTQ+ Students | Michael Sadowski | TEDxBard College

Michael Sadowski fiercely advocates the inclusion and safety of LGBTQ+ students in the school community. In a highly impactful talk, he promotes five core and necessary institutional changes in the educational system, which will help millions of students feel safer and more represented at school. Michael Sadowski is an associate dean of the college at Bard College, where he teaches courses in youth identity development and LGBTQ+ issues in education. In addition to Bard, Michael has taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where he completed his doctorate, and was a visiting professor at Stanford University in 2016–17.

Michael has published extensively on the issues affecting LGBTQ+ students, immigrant students, and adolescents more broadly. His 2016 book Safe Is Not Enough was featured by NPR and was cited by GLSEN founder Kevin Jennings as “the most important book written on LGBTQ issues in education in my lifetime.” In his TEDx talk, “Safe Is Still Not Enough,” Michael will discuss how educators, families, and communities can help LGBTQ+ youth thrive even amid the recent wave of oppressive state laws that threaten their education, their well-being, and their very identities.

Michael’s other books include In a Queer Voice: Journeys of Resilience from Adolescence to Adulthood (Temple University Press, 2013), based on a seven-year longitudinal interview study, Portraits of Promise: Voices of Successful Immigrant Students (Harvard Education Press, 2013), and the edited volume Adolescents at School (Harvard Education Press, 2020), now in its third edition and used in teacher education programs around the country and abroad. In the early 2000s, Michael was editor of the Harvard Education Letter, for which he won a National Press Club Award. He is also a creative nonfiction writer. Michael’s memoir, Men I’ve Never Been, was shortlisted for the William Faulkner–William Wisdom Award for Nonfiction and was named one of the 30 Best Gay and Lesbian Books of All Time by Book Authority. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx