Health watchdog: Nation’s social work accreditor refuses to remove DEI requirements

(The Center Square) – The Council on Social Work Education refused to oblige medical watchdog Do No Harm’s May letter that requested the accreditor remove diversity, equity, and inclusion requirements from its accreditation standards that Do No Harm sees as abandoning its "fundamental duty” to determine quality education.

Do No Harm chief medical officer Kurt Miceli told The Center Square that the Council on Social Work Education's (CSWE) “refusal to remove DEI standards from accredited social work education programs stands in sharp contrast to the widespread rollbacks occurring across other higher‑education accreditors, particularly in the helping professions.

“As the exclusive accreditor for social work education in the United States, CSWE continues to embed concepts such as ‘anti‑racism’ and other DEI principles into curricular standards,” Miceli said.

“These mandates elevate ideological activism over the essential goal of preparing practitioners who are skilled, ethical, and effective in serving people,” Miceli said. “In doing so, CSWE subordinates the practical competence and client-centered focus that define a true helping profession to a divisive political ideology across the hundreds of schools it accredits.”

In May, Do No Harm sent a letter to CSWE requesting that it drop DEI requirements, stating “such ideologies are harmful to medical education.”

Miceli told The Center Square: “As the president noted in his Executive Order on Reforming Accreditation To Strengthen Higher Education, an accreditor’s core responsibility is to ‘determine which institutions provide a quality education.’

“When accreditors deviate from that mission and instead impose ideological standards, they abandon their fundamental duty, diminishing academic rigor and weakening the preparation of competent professionals,” Miceli said. 

President and CEO of CSWE Halaevalu Vakalahi said in her response letter to Do No Harm’s request that CSWE does not believe Trump’s executive order in question or “any implementing regulations of the Department of Education specifically apply to CSWE.”

“Let us be clear: CSWE has never imposed a DEI policy deemed illegal at the state or federal level to deny accreditation to any applicant for accreditation or continued accreditation and will not do so in the future,” Vakalahi said.

“Your letter suggests that equipping social workers with an understanding of how human differences, discrimination, trauma, poverty, and environment impact people’s lives is itself a source of harm,” Vakalahi wrote. “We disagree with that premise.”

“A social worker cannot effectively treat, advocate for, or support individuals, families, and communities without understanding the context that shapes lived experiences,” Vakalahi said. “Diversity is everyone’s lived experience.”

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Neither Vakalahi nor CSWE media relations have responded to The Center Square’s request for comment.

Social worker and Do No Harm member Pamela Garfield-Jaeger told The Center Square that DEI, Critical Race Theory, and oppressor ideology has been embedded into “pretty much every training” in the social work profession, “even things that aren't specific about race or minorities.”

CSWE states in its letter to Do No Harm it’s “very committed to anti-racism,” Garfield-Jaeger said, but she believes they are “actually inducing racism because they’re telling us to hyperfocus on race constantly.”

Garfield-Jaeger said she thinks enforcing racial ideologies is especially terrible for children because it creates depression and anxiety.

“If you live in a world where you think everyone hates you or is after you … there's no way you can live healthy and strong if that's being reinforced within your therapy,” Garfield-Jaeger said.

“It's very demoralizing to tell somebody that they’re a victim of some kind of vague systemic oppression, that they can't actually nail down because of the color of their skin or some characteristic that they cannot control,” Garfield-Jaeger said.

It also “creates a sense of entitlement because they're told that they're so oppressed or that they have had so much persecution throughout their lives or from their history, that they are so entitled to just get everything handed to them,” Garfield-Jaeger said.

“Then, of course, we have all the poor white kids and even white adults, especially white men who are told they should hate themselves inherently because of the color of their skin or because they’re male,” Garfield-Jaeger said.

Miceli told The Center Square that “social work licensure boards in most jurisdictions require applicants to hold a CSWE‑accredited degree, thereby making CSWE a functional gatekeeper for entry into the licensed profession.” 

“If CSWE remains unwilling to remove its DEI standards from accreditation, then perhaps action will be needed at the state level to untether the dependency on this single accreditor,” Miceli said.