Moral Injury In Social Work Educators Under Political Constraint

Background and Purpose
Recent political scrutiny of higher education, including anti-ADEI initiatives and institutional risk management strategies, has altered the conditions under which social work educators teach and conduct scholarship. For a profession whose educational standards emphasize anti-racism, equity, and democratic participation, these pressures raise ethical tensions when faculty perceive that institutional responses constrain or discourage equity-focused teaching and public scholarship. Moral injury—distress that occurs when individuals feel they have acted, or been forced to act, in ways that conflict with deeply held moral commitments—provides a framework for understanding these experiences. While moral injury has been studied extensively in military and health care settings, it has rarely been examined in higher education. This study extends moral injury research to social work education by examining how institutional betrayal, institutional courage, and shifts in institutional trust relate to moral injury and functional distress among faculty teaching in politically constrained environments.

Methods
Data come from a national cross-sectional survey of faculty in CSWE-accredited social work programs. Eligible participants included full-time, adjunct, and administrative faculty teaching in the United States. Moral injury was measured using an adapted version of the Moral Injury Symptoms Scale–Health Professionals (MISS-HP) alongside a functional distress/despair item. Institutional betrayal and institutional courage were assessed through higher education–specific items capturing institutional responses to politically sensitive teaching, ADEI-related work, and public scholarship. Trust shift was measured by comparing respondents’ trust in their institution before and after recent experiences. Analyses included internal consistency estimates for the adapted moral injury scale, descriptive statistics, and regression models testing institutional betrayal and courage as predictors of moral injury.

Results
Preliminary analyses indicate acceptable internal consistency for the adapted moral injury scale (α = .81). Institutional betrayal was positively associated with moral injury (β = 6.24, p < .001), while institutional courage was negatively associated with moral injury (β = -.274, p < .001). Institutional betrayal was also associated with greater declines in institutional trust (β = .638, p < .001), and trust decline was associated with higher moral injury scores (β = .468, p < .001).

Conclusions and Implications
These findings extend moral injury research into higher education and highlight how institutional responses to political pressure shape the ethical and emotional conditions of social work teaching. When educators perceive institutional betrayal or declining trust, the resulting moral injury may undermine the resilience needed to sustain open inquiry, equity-focused teaching, and democratic dialogue in the classroom. By documenting these dynamics, the study contributes evidence about the institutional conditions required for social work education to fulfill its civic and democratic mission and prepare practitioners for justice-oriented practice in a contested political environment.