I don't drink Kool Aid.

8/.RCOT’s move should prompt a broader conversation in all professions:. Are our associations representing our field—or curating a version of it that fits a narrow worldview?. 🧵//.

7/.Pluralism is a professional strength. Associations should model it and should be criticized when they filter it out. You don’t need to agree with everyone in your profession to share a commitment to ethical practice, open dialogue, and competent care.

6/.If members weren’t meaningfully involved, then the association is no longer acting for the profession. It’s acting on it. That erodes trust, weakens legitimacy, and silences diverse perspectives within the field.

5/.This is about governance integrity. If associations are making ideological decisions:. - Were members surveyed?. - Was dissent welcomed?. - Was it openly debated?. Or was it a closed-door values alignment exercise?.

4/.It’s easy to say “inclusivity” is a shared value. But who defines what that means in practice?.When dissent or pluralism is framed as harmful, a small leadership circle ends up gatekeeping what counts as ethical or acceptable.

3/.Professional associations aren’t activist nonprofits. They exist to represent entire professions, which include people across political, cultural, and ideological spectra. When only one worldview drives decisions, governance becomes exclusionary.

2/.RCOT says it’s leaving X because the platform no longer aligns with its values of “integrity and inclusivity.” They’re moving to places like Bluesky, which are ideologically curated. That’s not just a tech choice. It’s a cultural and political one.

1/.When professional associations make values-based decisions like RCOT leaving X we need to ask a hard question:.🧵 Are they representing the full diversity of their membership, or just the ideological preferences of their leadership?.

End of an Era: A Reflection on ABC Therapeutics.

Important announcement posted on our website - please check it out!.

If you're coming to the AOTA Education Summit in Salt Lake City this November, come to my talk. It’s about how we can teach and talk about classical ethics without performance and without ideology. Just good conversation. I think it’s time.

If OT wants to be taken seriously in academia and health systems, we need to build for stability—not fleeting ideology. Because once the framing collapses, we’re left pretending it ever made sense to flag speculative fiction pedagogy for psychological safety.

It’s more than awkward. It’s revealing. The OT accreditor built a new cycle of standards and had to walk part of it back before it even launched. That’s what happens when professional infrastructure is drafted by trend, not principle.

Maybe it’s time we started paying closer attention. What was once framed as necessary now feels out of step. These gestures aren’t required, but they’re culturally coded as expected. And they land as oddly dated, like 2020 forgot to log off.

I’m fine with thoughtful reflection and respectful discussion. But that’s not what this is. This is a soft script - an implied standard of ideological alignment masquerading as 'professionalism.'. It doesn’t foster inclusion. It seems performative.

Meanwhile, AOTA is still encouraging presenters to include positionality statements and psychological safety disclaimers, even for a session about speculative fiction ethics pedagogy (??!!). They say it’s optional. But it’s framed like best practice. That’s a tell.

That walk-back came in early 2025—before the standards were even in force. ACOTE blinked in anticipation of the political and legal blowback hitting education and healthcare nationwide. That’s the problem with building policy on unstable ideology. It doesn’t hold.

Even in OT, ACOTE issued guidance, months before the July 2025 standards took effect, clarifying that programs don’t need to go beyond their institution’s DEI policies. No extra compliance. No ideological enforcement. It was a clear walk-back.

Across higher ed, we’re seeing quiet retreats from mandatory DEI statements, looser hiring rubrics, and the dismantling or renaming of DEI offices. Grant lines have dried up. Federal scrutiny is up. The ideological consensus has fractured. The culture moved on.

I’ve never been required to include a positionality statement for a conference presentation before. Seen them? Yes. Voluntary. Contextual. Usually tied to qualitative research or lived experience framing. It seems so odd now - just as the broader trend is reversing.