It looks like your organization should spell out how they define the term and what the purpose of those safe spaces should be. Perhaps the purpose is only tangential to holding effective meetings; or perhaps they are conducive to effective meetings on certain challenging topics only.

@henning Yes, they should spell it out. But given that language is a consensual agreement about the meanings of vocalisations, I would hate to think that my institution had its own, entirely unique, definition of the term.

@DrMcCleod I wish it were consensual, but nobody asked me. :)

Isn't the first definition you provide reasonably clear in the context of meetings? If a meeting is intended to be a safe space, it should be "be free of bias, conflict, criticism, or potentially threatening actions, ideas, or conversations". You might not like that, and it may go against your idea of what an "effective" meeting should look like, but that's more or less the intention.

@xLeitix That has great value in some circumstances, but is potentially open to severe abuse if applied to situations where it is not appropriate. Imagine a meeting of a faculty academic regulations committee. The Dean opens the meeting by proposing that, from now on, all forms of plagiarism be considered completely acceptable in undergraduate assignments. Is speaking against the Dean's proposal a forbidden act of criticism? Is voting against the Dean's proposal a forbidden act of introducing conflict? So, OP: please clarify what types of meetings are covered.

Your organization? Can you be more specific? Is this the whole university, a college, a club?

What did your organisation say when you asked them what they meant by the term?

@DanielHatton of course not, that would be ridiculous.

@GammaGames: So that makes the Merriam-Webster definition ridiculous. To take an example (from real life) we have a meeting of software developers at which A presents a problem solution which works, but takes 10 minutes to run. B presents a solution which also works, but runs in under 1 second. So is there not going to be conflict, criticism, &c? Or should we just flip a coin to choose which solution to use?

@GammaGames The fact that "position X is ridiculous" never stopped a middle manager from adopting position X in an attempt to grab decision-making powers from a voting body that legitimately holds those decision-making powers.

I voted to close the question - not because it is a bad question (I think it is great, +1), but because the answers are opinion based, or at least very much dependent on the definitions used by the persons who started the "safe space".

@Louic That isn't a good reason to close the question. I am perfectly capable of judging which answers are opinion based and which are based on a consensus definition of the term under discussion.

@DrMcCleod It is an excellent reason to close the question: because there is no canonical definition of a "safe space", all answers are by definition opinion-based. This website is not a discussion forum (although it often looks like one :), but a platform that provides clear answers to clear questions.

Does your institution have "house rules" about allowed and disallowed behaviour in the safe space? If such rules exist they might answer your question.

@AzorAhai-him- No. I will not go into any more detail in order to avoid leaking personal information.

Changing "organization" to (e.g.) "a student-run club" is not personal information lol

My answer to this would be that practically speaking it's completely meaningless because the meetings involve the same people as they would otherwise, and none of those people are likely to behave differently in the meeting on account of it being declared a "safe space". Anyone who respects other people will do so in the meeting whether or not the meeting is designated as one where you're supposed to do so, and anyone who doesn't (but thinks of themselves as someone who does) will learn nothing about how to respect others from being told that the meeting is designated as a safe space...

...so in effect, it's just a way for the institution (or department, or the person who called the meeting; whatever level the policy is applied at) to pat themselves on the back for doing a Good Thing without actually having to do anything. It may even be counterproductive because having patted themselves on the back, they may feel they have done their quota of Good Things and therefore not have to do some other Good Thing that might have actual consequences.

Don't over-think this. It doesn't usually mean more than "leave guns and knives outside the door" (both literally and metaphorically). It is also HR-doublespeak for "a meeting where gullible employees can give the company enough information to fire them, without realizing what they are doing."

@AzorAhai-him- Of course it is! Try playing 'Guess Who'. Those individual data points soon add up.

@kaya3 ugh, so you're describing elements of my last workplace. I quit in part because of this. So easy to fall in to actually believing it all yourself too, path of least resistance...

@drmcc Uh, no. You really need to provide more detail because answers are assuming very different contexts.

Let's assume worse case scenario, you change it to say "department." someone gets made at you and starts stalking you and know they know you're part of a department. Since 90% of us are this doesn't give them much information.