Unburdened by false humility, postmodern trauma activists claim to have understood for the first time what drives all of human suffering
Trauma DispatchTrauma news you can't get anywhere else. |
|
|
A special issue collection of articles warns against the dangers of ideological capture, and calls for social work education to reclaim evidence, ethics, and genuine critical thinking. CATEGORY: SCHOOLS  Vicki Lens, Editor-in-Chief Source: Journal of Teaching in Social Work Read time: 2.5 minutes This Happened In March 2025, the Journal of Teaching in Social Work published a special issue devoted to critiquing the woke hegemony in the training of new social workers. Who Did This? Vicki Lens is the editor-in-chief of the journal, and is Professor in the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College, New York. Her work has focused on critiquing welfare reforms and analyzing court decisions related to welfare. Naomi Farber and Maryah Fram joined Lens as guest editors to put together this issue. Both are professors in schools of social work. The Premise The catalyst for the special issue was the very public reactions to the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel, which included a disproportionate number of social work students and faculty signing petitions and joining protests that refused to condemn terrorism and viewed Hamas’ actions as ‘valorized violence in the name of antiracist practice.’ This raised a concern that the social work profession was degraded in ‘a coalescing of what we have been observing for some time, that perhaps from impatience and frustration with the stickiness of entrenched social problems, our profession has gradually been letting go of the necessary burdens of the humbling search for professional and scientific knowledge.’ [1] A contributory factor was that in 2022 the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) decreed that diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) must be taught throughout all social work curricula.
Authors described consequences such as student self-censorship. Indeed, two of the papers were anonymously-authored for fear of reprisals, reminiscent of eighteenth-century European autocracies where dissidents often published under pseudonyms to avoid imprisonment or exile.
Other essays explored the politicization of language, the pitfalls of DEI rhetoric, and the displacement of scientific inquiry by postmodern frameworks. At stake, contributors argued, is the profession’s ability to balance values of justice with commitments to evidence and client well-being. Collectively, the issue called for humility, pluralism, and a recommitment to rigorous, open, and diverse scholarship that resists ideological capture and safeguards social work’s mission to enhance human well-being. Analysis Exactly for these reason, clinical work and research on trauma has been another direct victim of this ideological capture of social work. The concerns raised in this special issue help explain how certain trauma-related concepts gained extraordinary influence despite weak empirical grounding. Within a professional culture that privileges moral certainty over methodological skepticism, ideas such as “the body keeps the score,” toxic stress, adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), complex PTSD, and epigenetic intergenerational transmission of trauma flourished as predetermined narratives despite the lack of evidence. Each offered an intuitive, emotionally resonant story: that trauma operates as an insidious oppressive force that indelibly imprints on the body, poisons development, or echoes through generations. Social workers constitute approximately 60% of the psychotherapist workforce. Their voices dominate the narratives in clinics, workshops, influencer videos, and online comments about the impact of trauma and how to treat it. When critical perspectives are silenced, clinicians and educators may adopt concepts that align with prevailing activist or moral frameworks, rewarding dramatic language over cautious science. Students trained in such environments are less likely to challenge weak evidence, while practitioners may apply these ideas unquestioningly, shaping interventions and policies around them. Thus, the professional drift toward rigid ideological mandates not only undermines academic freedom, but also creates fertile ground for the proliferation of trauma “hype concepts” that captivate the imagination while evading empirical accountability. References [1] Lens V, Farber N, Fram M (2025). Editorial. Journal of Teaching in Social Work 45(2):179-197. DOI 10.1080/08841233.2025.2472491. Comments are closed.
|