When Social Work Applies Its Ethics Selectively |
I joined the National Association of Social Workers soon after receiving my MSW in the early 1980s. It was an organization whose values I believed in: advocacy for the vulnerable, intolerance of hate, and a willingness to examine the undercurrents of bigotry wherever they appeared. I was proud to be a member.
The NASW of today is abandoning that heritage. It has been silent as Jewish and Israeli social workers have found themselves increasingly isolated within the profession. Statements have been issued; advocacy has not. Lip service has replaced action. NASW has drifted from the core ethical commitments it once championed.
On Wednesday, February 18th, the International Federation of Social Workers will vote on expelling the Israeli Union of Social Workers. No other national association has faced comparable sanction despite numerous armed conflicts involving IFSW member states. NASW has offered no public response to the 2025 censure or the pending expulsion vote.
Only Israeli social workers have been asked by an international professional body to lobby their own government for exemption from military service in the midst of a defensive war—an extraordinary demand not imposed on social workers in any other conscription-based democracy. The result is a clear double standard: one national group judged and disciplined under criteria applied nowhere else.
The expulsion motion was initiated by the Irish association—yet no international body ever demanded Irish social workers account for their position during Ireland’s decades of sectarian violence. The double standard is unmistakable, yet NASW has raised no public objection to a process that singles out one nation’s social workers for exceptional treatment.
NASW’s continued affiliation with IFSW is not a necessity but a choice. Its silence reflects judgment, not constraint. NASW would not remain silent if an international federation repeatedly censured associations representing Black, LGBTQ, or other historically marginalized professionals.
Repeated requests from Jewish social workers for dialogue have gone largely unanswered, reinforcing the perception that concerns about antisemitism now fall outside NASW’s current priorities.
The issue is whether a professional organization dedicated to social justice can tolerate the application of unique standards to one group of its colleagues while remaining silent. Professional ethics demand consistency and the willingness to confront discrimination regardless of the identity of those targeted.
IFSW has singled out one national association for sanction and has imposed standards applied nowhere else. NASW’s silence is not neutrality—it is complicity. Had any other minority community within our profession been treated in this manner, the response would almost certainly have been swift and unequivocal. That it has not been so here speaks for itself.
If the expulsion proceeds, professional integrity would require NASW to reconsider its affiliation with IFSW. Continued participation in a body that applies unique sanctions to one national group would be inconsistent with the ethical standards NASW claims to uphold.
We look to our professional associations to do the same. A profession that applies its principles selectively abandons them. Social justice that excludes Jews is not justice at all.
The author is a former chair of the Georgia NASW ethics committee and a long-time member of the profession.