There seemed to be less news coming out of the American Psychological Association (APA) meeting this year. Maybe it was because of the dominance of the debate within the APA over torture and a resolution dealing with locations of employment.

For those unfamiliar with the issue, over the years APA has passed a number of resolutions opposing torture. This year a resolution is up for vote by the membership that could potentially be seen as restricting where psychologists could work.

The resolution includes or ends with the following wording:

Be it resolved that psychologists may not work in settings where persons are held outside of, or in violation of, either International Law (e.g., the UN Convention Against Torture and the Geneva Conventions) or the US Constitution (where appropriate), unless they are working directly for the persons being detained or for an independent third party working to protect human rights.

Pro and con statements have been issued and there has been a great deal of discussion of this issue. From the con perspective, the controversial aspect is the restriction on where psychologists can work, as opposed to a restriction on unethical behavior. 

This resolution prompted a great deal of discussion at most of the meetings I attended at APA. In particular, it could have a major impact on psychologists working for the Federal Government and the Military. It does open up an interesting question as to whether a professional organization should be able to specify the locations where its members may work. Even for those outside of psychology but in human resources or other professions, this presents an intriguing moral and ethical question.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 21st, 2008 at 5:30 am and is filed under Public Sector HR. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.