The American Psychological Association, the nation’s largest professional organization for psychologists, could lose its power to accredit educational programs. In late September, a key federal oversight board voted to recommend suspending the APA as a federal accreditor. If the Secretary of Education accepts the recommendation, the APA will lose its status for the first time in the organization’s history.
The vote followed “scathing” third-party comments from practicing psychologists and policy professionals. Critics charged the APA with politicizing its programs, including the embrace of “critical” psychotherapies that make dubious assumptions about “gender identity” and label Jews colonial oppressors. The APA’s commitment to social-justice ideology undermines its program quality and nondiscrimination standards, commenters noted, particularly in its failure to address complaints of anti-Semitism.
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These issues are just part of a broader pattern of decline. As Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Colin Wright and Andrew Hartz recently reported, roughly 70 of the 90 panels at a 2026 APA conference had clear ideological agendas, including “loosening/abolishing gender assessment guidelines” for medical transition. The APA also recently elected Candice Hargons—a psychologist who campaigned on a commitment to “dismantle oppressive systems” and dismissed “objectivity” as an enemy of scientific integrity—as its next president.
While the APA’s Commission on Accreditation disagreed with the oversight board’s recommendation, it vowed to address all the issues raised in its hearing and to bring itself into compliance with federal regulations. Taking the Commission at its word, the possible suspension represents a rare opportunity for the APA to reinvigorate its standards and rebuild its organizational culture to promote the interests of psychology trainees and the public they serve—not social-justice ideology.
How can the APA turn its ship around? Some basic reforms include introducing a scientific integrity standard, definitions for what constitutes “unsettled” scientific areas, a revised “non-discrimination” standard, and clearer protocols for navigating program complaints.
First, the APA should recommit itself to open scientific inquiry on controversial issues like gender medicine. That would mean adding “scientific integrity” to its enumerated professional values for accredited programs. Doing so would help ensure that APA-accredited programs create environments where faculty and students can teach and research competing scientific viewpoints in good faith.
Currently, the APA dismisses solid criticism of the weak evidence base for youth gender medicine—which prompted medical practice reversals in countries that had been early adopters—as “misinformation.” That has to change. Greater tolerance is also needed for research findings that challenge the affirming model of care or the supposed immutability of “gender identity.” Committing the organization to a single approach to treating gender dysphoria renders psychologists ill-equipped to navigate the psychological and developmental nuance required to work with today’s gender-confused youth.
Second, the Commission could introduce benchmarks for what constitutes “contested or unsettled” scientific areas. While the APA requires programs to demonstrate alignment with “the current evidence base” across psychological competencies, its public claims regarding the benefits of youth gender medicine are often based on cherry-picked individual studies that don’t reflect the findings of systematic reviews of evidence that evaluate overall evidence quality. Clear benchmarks would build on the scientific integrity standard by requiring programs to disclose the certainty of the evidence and present credible, competing interpretations where there is disagreement.
The change would benefit the APA by eliminating ambiguity—for example, by defining “unsettled” as open questions about benefits and risks according to the findings of systematic reviews, or when reputable clinical practice guidelines recommend varying approaches to the same issue. Clear benchmarks here would benefit trainees and the Commission, while also protecting the APA reputationally.
A related change would be to make it clear that the organization’s resolutions, testimony, and position statements are not proxies for scientific validity—a use to which they are often put. Nor should deviations from the APA’s conclusions automatically demonstrate an APA program’s noncompliance. The Commission should also consider explicitly distinguishing between advocacy positions and empirical findings through the use of evidence hierarchies.
Psychology students deserve equal treatment and access to APA programs. But the Commission’s “DEI” standards go much further than this guarantee. They would be more effective if presented in the language of a universal, nondiscrimination standard. The APA should not require trainees to agree with their philosophical claims about demographic characteristics like “gender identity.”
Addressing the Commission’s concerns about anti-Semitism poses a different challenge. While APA standards ostensibly already protect Jewish students, explicitly extending these protections to secular Jews is worth considering.
The APA’s anti-Semitism issues, however, are arguably more the result of insufficient enforcement than of inadequate protections. Moreover, the code of federal regulations governing accreditation already requires accreditors to review standards-related complaints—including complaints of anti-Semitism—fairly and promptly.
Clearer timelines for resolving complaints would help, as would establishing formal corrective actions for when programs refuse to investigate credible, standards-related complaints. The Commission could also strengthen existing recordkeeping requirements for how programs assess and resolve such issues, including documenting any corrective measures taken.
If the Commission on Accreditation is serious about the government’s concerns, these recommendations are low-hanging fruit. These revised standards are already consistent with the values and spirit of existing accreditation standards and would buttress them in ways that are aligned with the Commission’s quality standards and emphasis on education that serves the interests of patients and future psychologists.
In an era defined by public distrust in institutions, the APA has a rare opportunity to stand up for scientific integrity, evidence-based practice, and equal access. For the sake of patients and trainees, let’s hope that it seizes it.