COLUMBIA SOCIAL WORK REVIEW, VOL. XXIII  |   1    

Over the past year, Columbia has made one thing brutally clear: 
students—especially those at the School of Social Work—have been 
targeted and punished for daring to speak out. Expulsion, suspension, 
eviction, and doxxing have become the cost of conscience. Those who 
speak out for Palestine, for abolition, for transformative change have 
often done so at great personal risk.

As a student at the School of Social Work, I have watched the institution 
fail to protect the very values it claims to teach—transparency, 
accountability, and justice. In a program meant to prepare us to challenge 
systems of oppression, students have instead faced institutional 
retaliation. That contradiction has fractured the relationship between the 
school and the students it seeks to shape into ethical practitioners.

For me, the Review has become more than a publication—it has become 
a site of resistance. A student-led space where social work is reclaimed 
as a radical, liberatory practice. Where we refuse the depoliticized, 
bureaucratic versions of the profession and instead uplift visions rooted 
in abolition, decolonization, mutual aid, and collective care. A space that 
makes room for political clarity, grief, imagination, and rage.

I dedicate my work on this issue to all students who have been punished 
for embodying the true ethics of social work—ethics that demand we 
stand with the oppressed, even when it is inconvenient or unsafe. The 
work within these pages uplifts the voices of those most impacted by the 
very systems we are taught to critique—communities our profession has 
historically harmed and must now learn to serve with integrity.

I believe the Columbia School of Social Work must not only reckon 
with its complicity in systems of violence—it must rise to the challenge 

A PERSONAL REFLECTION FROM  
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF: HALLA ANDERSON

of transformation. It must become a space that honors its deepest 
commitments to justice and to the people social work was always meant 
to protect.

In solidarity, and in defiance, 

*The views expressed here are solely my own and do not necessarily reflect the views  
of the Columbia Social Work Review, its editorial board, or the Columbia School of 
Social Work.

Halla Anderson  
Editor-In-Chief, 2024-2025 
Columbia Social Work Review