Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell visited Brandeis University on Oct. 21, where she was named the 2025 Justice Brandeis Practitioner-in-Residence. The one-day residency, which includes a $10,000 honorarium, featured a packed audience of students, faculty, and staff, and was moderated by Professor Melissa Stimell of the Legal Studies Program.
Students from several classes submitted questions in advance, and selected students were invited to engage directly with the Attorney General during the event. Also in attendance were State Representative Thomas M. Stanley, who represents Waltham; Waltham City Councilor Paul Katz; and former State Representative and Brandeis alumnus Jay Kaufman. Earlier that same day, Campbell officially announced her bid for re-election.
“Massachusetts deserves an Attorney General who leads with empathy, compassion, urgency, and a deep belief that this job is about more than enforcing the law—it’s about making life better for people who far too often have felt left out and left behind,” Campbell said in a press release.
Campbell, who grew up in Roxbury, opened her talk by sharing her deeply personal story—a narrative shaped by loss, resilience, and public service. Her mother died when Campbell was just eight months old, traveling to visit her father in prison. She did not meet her father until he was released when she was eight. Raised by her grandmother, who struggled with alcoholism, Campbell and her family relied heavily on public housing and social services.
Both of her brothers cycled in and out of the prison system, and Campbell later lost her twin brother, Andre, who passed away while in the custody of the Department of Corrections as a pretrial detainee. Reflecting on these experiences, Campbell spoke candidly about how her family’s history informs her work as Attorney General and her commitment to criminal justice reform and public safety rooted in equity. A major theme throughout the event was Campbell’s holistic approach to public safety, which she described as grounded in a public health lens. “Why can’t you imagine a community where you don’t need policing?” she asked the audience, emphasizing her focus on prevention rather than punishment.
“The egregious actions we are seeing by ICE in our communities is horrific, it is cruel and it is absolutely not promoting public safety. It is promoting fear, inventing fear at times… it’s creating significant disruption, and most importantly it’s suggesting, which is absolutely false, that every single immigrant here in the Commonwealth is somehow a criminal, which we know is total nonsense,” Campbell said.
For her office, the “preventative work” includes ensuring access to housing, nutrition, education, and transportation—the foundational social supports that reduce conditions leading to crime. “It’s this holistic approach,” she explained. Campbell also noted that her office works not only with first responders and law enforcement, but also with social service agencies, underscoring her belief that true public safety begins long before an arrest is made.
“You can hold people accountable for perpetuating violence and crime by upholding the Constitution, respecting their due process rights, ensuring they have access to counsel, and that they are treated with dignity as they go through the legal system, as we do every single day,” she said. When asked about the U.S. Supreme Court and its role in the current political climate, Campbell offered a nuanced reflection on judicial integrity amid national polarization. “While I wouldn’t necessarily pick all of these members of the court… and folks who would not politicize the court, I still believe and have faith in the court as a whole,” she said.
“I say that because I still don’t actually think that this court aligns with the perspective of our president that the executive branch should have more full power and authority than it currently has. He has obviously continued to push the envelope, and yes they have aligned on certain decisions that I disagree with, but I still don’t think they’ve taken the posture that they are wholeheartedly with him on the extremist view that he holds for what the president of the United States should be, which I think aligns more with a fascist society, authoritarianism… that being said we are following this voting rights issue in particular quite closely, we were disappointed with the arguments.”
Since taking office, Campbell has positioned Massachusetts as a national leader on progressive state-level policy enforcement, often in direct opposition to federal directives. Her work spans immigration enforcement, healthcare access, civil rights, and economic justice. She recently helped secure a $7.4 billion opioid settlement against Purdue Pharma, filed suit against the neo-Nazi group NSC-131, and introduced stronger anti-hate crime legislation.
