Activists have challenged the reach of the carceral state into higher education. Whether calling out the exclusion of currently and formerly incarcerated people from higher education or the ways campus police perpetuate the racial and economic biases that plague the U.S. criminal legal system, these voices offer insights that higher education leaders should take seriously. Yet, these challenges are often met with appeals to safety, which purport to override concerns about the harms produced by extension of the criminal legal system into educational contexts. Campus safety debates offer an opportunity to examine the role of willful ignorance in the perpetuation of systemic injustices on college and university campuses, highlighting tensions between the testimony of those challenging these systems and practices and prevailing narratives around safety. In analyzing the operation of willful ignorance in this context, we will focus on campus policing as a manifestation of carcerality in higher education. We argue that the perpetuation of policing in higher education in the United States reflects willful White ignorance that represents both an epistemic and moral failing on the part of higher education leaders.