Document Type

Pre-Print

Publication Date

8-2024

Subjects

Social Work education, Pedagogy

Abstract

On January 9, 2024, Social Work journal published in advance access a commentary by Farber and Fram titled “The Danger of Ideology: Social Work, Israel, and Anti-Semitism” (Farber & Fram, 2024). Writing following the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, the authors lay out their central thesis in the opening paragraph: “We watch in horror and stand in support of Israel. As social work educators and scholars, we must also speak about the complicity of our profession in nurturing anti-Semitism and the ideology that undergirds Hamas and other terrorist organizations” (p. 1). This is a serious claim, and one that we, as Jewish social work educators and scholars, believe must be carefully examined. This response considers the authors’ three major arguments: (1) social work organizations had a slow and insufficient response to the attacks of October 7; (2) even after mounting evidence of atrocity, organizations failed to condemn Hamas; and (3) schools of social work are indoctrinating social workers into a hatred of Jews and Israel. To each of these points, we consider the evidence provided to evaluate the veracity of the facts and credibility of the argument, and assess the alignment of the argument to social work values and responsibilities.

Rights

© Copyright the author(s) 2024

Description

This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published as: A Response to “The Danger of Ideology”. Social Work, 69(2), 209-211.

DOI

10.1093/sw/swae011

Persistent Identifier

https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/42289

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