This article critically examines the fulsome embrace of Antiracist, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (ADEI) rhetoric by social work institutions in the United States, identifying historic precedents and contemporary implications. We examine theories that captivated the profession in the last half century and the corollary political developments.…

The heart can care but be misled by fine sounding words that obscure harms. Discovering harms is often hard work, for example determining exactly what outcomes clients experience in agencies and how to improve these, what avoidable errors social work educators and practitioners make and how to minimize these, what students actually learn and use…

Anti-oppression is woven throughout the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) 2022 Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards (EPAS). The call to action is clear; how to engage can be challenging. How do we bring anti-oppressive practice (AOP) pedagogy alive in the classroom? This article aims to create space in which Social Work educators…

Debates over the nature of social work education are not new. What is new, however, comes from the Council on Social Work Education's (CSWE) injection of critical pedagogy into social work education through "anti-racist" and "anti-oppressive" competencies laid out in the 2022 Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards…

The purpose of this philosophical liberal critique of the 2022 Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards (EPAS) is to highlight the danger of using a single lens perspective in social work education in addressing discrimination, racism, inequality and other forms of injustices. A brief review of the concept of social justice illustrates how…

There remains a disease between social work and Queer communities, inequities, and issues. Core to this is the blatant lack of a decidedly Queer-affirmative approach in both implicit and explicit curriculum in accredited programs, let alone the ensuing training and practice of social work practitioners. This research study deployed a…

This paper uses a modest finding from a research study as a window into the world of social work education in Scotland. The study demonstrated that students believed by their classmates to be most dominant (white, straight men) were in fact the most reluctant to speak out. This finding is woven into an examination of a social work pedagogy…

Drawing from my experiences as an American-Israeli Jewish woman in social work academia, I use this paper to reflect upon the ways in which the Council on Social Work Education's newly-mandated anti-racist and anti-oppressive paradigms are problematic for the future of the social work profession. While it is important for social workers to address…

Contemporary events, including the recent Presidential campaign, have demonstrated the symbolic and political significance of language in our society and culture. Language is a primary tool for "naming the world" and defining our desires roles - as subjects and ojects - in the environments we inhabit. Yet, as often as language is a means…

The social work profession is grounded in principles of social justice, emphasizing the recognition and addressing of inequalities. Social work pedagogy has increasingly focused on anti-racist and anti-oppressive frameworks to confront historical injustices within the field. Despite their value to social work, when these frameworks are applied as…

In this article, I argue that antiracist political activism modeled after the teachings of critical race theory (CRT) and critical social justice theory (CSJ) more generally, is an unethical form of pedagogy and clinical praxis that will likely damage members of society by producing incompetent mental health professionals. If the premises and…