Moving From the Language of Threat to a Discourse of Belonging: Reimagining Terms in the Field of Violence Prevention

This paper offers an overview of the language of threat and a brief history of threat assessment as the prevailing approach to school safety in the United States. Following this, the limited applicability and efficacy of the language of threat is demonstrated with the help of the distinction between facing a threat and being labeled as a threat. The detrimental effects of labeling a student as a threat are explained by introducing Educational Displacement Theory and the accompanying model of radicalization. The concluding sections offer a shift from the language of threat to a discourse of belonging, utilizing Jack Mezirow’s notions of building a discourse and an empirical example of a violence prevention initiative—Project Belonging—where a discourse of belonging is centered in the curriculum and pedagogy. This inquiry hopes to catalyze further dialogue, scrutiny, and exploration into the language used within the field of targeted violence prevention.