FIRE is deeply concerned that CSWE is promoting vague standards that facilitate and encourage discrimination against students on the basis of their political viewpoints. Certainly, the Department of Health and Human Services does not want to put its imprimatur on viewpoint discrimination.

Specifically, CSWE�s Educational Policy�compliance with which is a requirement of accreditation�effectively requires social work programs to impose ideological litmus tests on their students as a condition of accreditation. Educational Policy Section 3.0 requires that �graduates [of CSWE-accredited programs] demonstrate the ability to�understand the forms and mechanisms of oppression and discrimination and apply strategies of advocacy and social change that advance social and economic justice.� CSWE�s requirement that graduates from its programs work to �advance social and economic justice� raises serious concerns. Because no objective consensus on the �correct� meaning of such terminology can reasonably exist in a diverse democratic society, these vague evaluative criteria too often become vehicles for pressuring students to alter or abandon their core political, philosophical, or moral beliefs. As the twentieth century well demonstrates, one man�s idea of �social justice� may be another man�s idea of totalitarian tyranny.