To:  Dr. Halaevalu Fonongava’inga Ofahengaue Vakalahi, Council on Social Work Education

       Ms Carol Carpot, Canadian Association of Social Work Education

The field of social work is mandated to protect the interests of groups which historically have experienced challenges in the context of the dominant culture. Currently, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) brings historical injustices to account, but, some argue, promotes resentment, polarized thinking and even hatred.*

The undersigned, recognizing diversity, equity and inclusion as central values, are concerned.

  • DEI fails to register antisemitism as a form of oppression, omitting its study from the curriculum.

  • The decolonizing narrative has been firmly attached to a hatred toward the only democratic country in the Middle East: the Jewish homeland colonized by the Babylonians, the Romans, the Greeks, the Ottoman Empire, among others, now falsely represented as a colonial state within many anti-oppression readings (i.e. Walia, 2013). Social work reliably provides historical context for all marginalized/oppressed groups, just not for Jews who have a history of forced assimilation, persecution and expulsion from countries they considered home, this over the course of centuries.

  • Social work privileges Arab nationalism while vilifying Jewish nationalism (Mendes, 2023).

  • The emphasis on decolonization has some social work academics justifying the October 7 massacre (as documented in the Canadian press).

  • Jewish social work students are being told that they are white, 'privileged' or unconsciously imprinted by white supremist ways of thinking by faculty lacking awareness of the Jewish identity (Hodge and Boddie, 2022, Poizner et al, 2022, Cox and Marlowe, 2024), the Holocaust and antisemitism (Cox, 2021, Hodge and Boddie, 2022, Poizner et al, 2022, Cox and Marlowe, 2024), and the indigeneity of the Jews to the land of Israel (Poizner, et al., 2022, Mendes, 2023,).

Social work, in a unique position to celebrate differences while elevating the plight of all groups, has lost its moral compass, The frame of 'oppressor vs oppressed' or narratives about 'indigenous vs colonizer', though designed to support and validate, are stoking division. The emphasis on the victim label is disempowering, promoting distrust. The credibility of the field is in jeopardy. We request review and modification of the worldview that currently girds social work practice, necessary in order to better train and service individuals from all ethnicities.

At recent Congressional Hearings, House Rep. Burgess Owens stated, "To teach one race, all minorities, that they are oppressed, through DEI, we are going to teach that another group, Whites and Jews, are oppressors. The result is hatred, segregation, and the inability of our children to see evil when it's present."

Cox, Carole (2021). Addressing Anti-Semitism in Social Work Education. Journal of Religion and Spirituality in Social Work: Social Thought, 40:2, 111-125.

Carole Cox & Dana Marlowe (2023): Antisemitism in social work findings from an exploratory national survey, Journal of Religion & Spirituality in Social Work: Social Thought.

Cox, C (2023). Antisemitism and social work: Challenges and opportunities for education and practice, Journal of Ethnic and Cultural Diversity in Social Work.

Hodge, D. R., & Boddie, S. C. (2022). Are Practitioners Equipped to Work With and Advocate for Members of the American Jewish Community? An Analysis of Discourse-Shaping Periodicals. Families in Society, 103(3), 358-369.

Mendes, Phillip (2023). ‘Empowering the lived experience voices of Arabs but not Jews: The attempted subversion of universal social work values by the extremist Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement’. Migration und Soziale Arbeit, 1, pp.35-44.

Poizner, A., Love, S., Spindel, A., Primerano, J., Alloul, E., Katzman, R. & Walker, R. (2022). Exclusion, Isolation, and Rejection: Emerging Anecdotal Reports of Jews Studying Social Work. Preliminary Findings. Journal of Contemporary Antisemitism, 5(2), 97-110.

Walia, Harsha (2013). Undoing Border Imperialism. Washington, DC: AK Press.

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