The University of Texas at Austin requires all students who major in the field of social work to complete “anti-racism” training as part of their introductory coursework.
The Steve Hicks School of Social Work offers a bachelor’s degree in social work.
According to the degree requirements, all candidates for this degree must complete Foundations of Social Justice.
During the Fall 2025 semester, the university is offering four sections of this class.
According to the syllabus, the section taught by Dr. Fiona Conway on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 12:30 p.m., requires students to demonstrate a “competency” to “[e]ngage Anti-Racism, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (ADEI) in Practice.”
Specifically, this requires students “[d]emonstrate anti-racist and anti-oppressive social work practice at the individual, family, group, organizational, community, research, and policy level.”
Students are then assessed in their “competence” in “anti-racism” on a scale from “insufficient progress” to “advanced competency.”
A second course requirement makes students apply these concepts to their personal lives.
Author James Lindsay has compared this sort of “critical reflection” to “political warfare techniques” used in Maoist China.
In addition, the entry-level course requires students to engage in a “Social Justice Immersive Activity.” This is where students “witness the experience of a group of people navigating oppressive structural barriers or marginalization.”
Examples that would fulfill this requirement include “poverty, forced migration, incarceration, or other forms of injustice.” The student chooses an issue, and then the instructor designs a group or individual assignment for it.
Promotion of this sort of content is a condition of the Hicks school’s accreditation by the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE). The CSWE’s 2022 “Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards” lists nine “competencies” in which participating institutions must train students.
CSWE’s book listed “[e]ngage anti-racism, diversity, equity, and inclusion … in practice” as the third competency.
Social Work education has a long and contentious history at UT-Austin. During the 1940s, creation of a school of social work was a source of conflict between then-university president Homer Rainey and the Board of Regents.
While Rainey was ultimately fired, the university launched a school of social work in 1950.
In 2017, UT-Austin renamed it after R. Steven Hicks, a media executive whom governors Rick Perry and Greg Abbott appointed to the UT System Board of Regents. Hicks has donated extensively to Texas politicians, including over $500,000 in donations to Abbott since 2015. Hicks’ term as a regent ended in May 2023.
UT-Austin recently told Texas Scorecard that they were conducting “an audit to assess the classes we teach and our overall curriculum.”
UT-Austin is a component institution of the University of Texas System. The UT System is overseen by a Board of Regents that is appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Texas Senate. Kevin Eltife is the current board chairman.
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