Time To Protect Our Lawyers, Judges, And Doctors From Woke Associations

By Michael A. Shires, PhD

Sparks are expected to fly when the affiliated accreditors of the American Bar Association (ABA) and the American Psychological Association (APA) come up for review by the Department of Education’s National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity (NACIQI). And these sparks should ignite a fire that torches the monopoly power these two associations currently wield over their respective professions.

For our justice system, the ABA exercises a monopoly over the design and delivery of legal education (through accreditation) and a stranglehold on lawyers’ ability to practice law (through state licensure). Similarly, if you wish to become a psychologist, in most states you will need to attend an APA-accredited program. In both cases, the association-affiliated accreditor is the sole gatekeeper to federal aid programs and state licensure.

On the accreditation side, why is this a problem? Well, on the surface, it seems very reasonable that the standards for highly technical professions like law and medicine should be set by experts in those fields, and these professional associations represent the largest concentrations of such experts.

If the ABA and APA limited themselves to enforcing standards associated with competence, there would be no issue. Unfortunately, political activists in these associations could not leave it there. As a result, these associations are feverishly working to reshape the educational institutions they regulate by manipulating standard-setting processes to advance their own radical, far-left agendas (see my Expert Insight on how this works).

In law, the ABA forces institutions to embrace divisive “social justice” causes and racially discriminatory Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies. The ABA has built an entire industry around these issues — it runs conferences and distributes ideologically loaded materials to schools and firms. Through its accreditation standards, the ABA forces law schools to indoctrinate their attorneys in line with its own radical agenda.

In psychology, these agendas take the form of advancing notions of white supremacy/privilege/guilt/fragility and so forth. Like the American Medical Association (AMA), the APA is also involved in pushing fringe, discredited gender ideology — theories that culminate in barbaric surgical and chemical mutilations of young children, declaring traditional masculinity as “psychologically harmful,” and promoting a divisive (and discriminatory) “anti-racist” agenda.

As a result, an entire generation of lawyers and doctors have been thoroughly indoctrinated in outlandish progressive theory and woke ideologies. Many of those tasked with defending the rule of law and equal treatment under law thus believe that law itself is a “racist” instrument for upholding white supremacy. Many of those tasked with caring for the most vulnerable among us — children — now believe that parents “oppress” their own confused children when they treat them as they are and as God made them.

Yet, despite their best efforts to drag their respective professions to the ideological fringe, the ABA and APA — as organizations — are still not broadly representative of practicing professionals in their respective fields. Consider that the ABA has seen its membership plummet from roughly half of all U.S. lawyers in 1978 to just over 10 percent of active lawyers today. Likewise, the APA’s membership represents significantly less than half of practicing professionals.

No one disputes the legal authority of these private organizations to hold these positions — although they are certainly not reflective of the beliefs of all professionals. Rather, it is their abuse of the accreditation and licensure processes — areas that should be politically neutral and compliant with existing law — that makes their activism an abuse of the public trust.

It is also important to note that abuse is intentional. In my experience in public policy accreditation, the association developed and published a DEI strategic plan to actively advance their partisan and ideological agenda. The ABA and APA both have made these issues top priorities and used their accreditors to advance them.

It is this egregious politicization of accreditation stemming from their dual role that is a step too far. Because of this activism, neither association-based accreditor should be allowed to retain their monopoly over professional training and certification.

In both cases, NACIQI should recommend, and the Department should act, to de-recognize these accreditors, thereby opening the door to legitimate competition and real conversations about alternative licensure in statehouses across the nation.

Michael A. Shires, Ph.D., is Vice Chair of Education Opportunity and Senior Policy Officer at the America First Policy Institute.