President's Column

An Interview with AAG Executive Director Gary Langham (Part 2)

October 3, 2020

Last month I shared Part 1 of an interview I conducted with AAG’s Executive Director Gary Langham to help the membership learn a bit about his perspectives, goals, and personal history that led him to AAG.

We met on August 19, close to the one-year anniversary of his first week in this role—half of which has been during the coronavirus pandemic. The interview lasted for over an hour, generating far too much to publish as a single column. This is the second part, which has been edited for content and clarity.

AMY: What drew you to AAG?

GARY: For the last nine years, I had worked for an environmental and conservation non-profit, the National Audubon Society, where I was Vice President and Chief Scientist. I managed a similar-sized budget and almost twice as many staff. Staff was spread all over the country and worked in different research programs, ranging from marine conservation to climate change research. Many people like birds, but they’re also great for setting conservation priorities and monitoring environmental health. You can use science to show policymakers the connection between bird populations and protected areas, like marine reserves. If the fish-eating birds like puffins aren’t doing well, then the fish stocks aren’t either.

It was a great job with great staff, so the truth is I wasn’t looking for a new position. The AAG’s headhunters called, and they asked me who I thought would be right for the job. So, I gave them some recommendations, and then they said, how come you’re not applying for the job? And I said, what? I’m not a geographer. And they said, no, you should look at the job description again because of your experience—with management, media, fundraising, policy, and non-profits—is what they’re looking for. And I realized that as a trained ecologist, I really am a physical geographer of sorts—I should have been going to the Annual Meeting all along!

AMY: So we had some good headhunters. Excellent! Let’s just stay within the vein of AAG. This is a question that I never really thought about until I took on my current role. AAG just sort of seemed opaque to me until I stepped in as vice president. So what does the AAG Executive Director actually do?

GARY: That’s a great question. My job is to lead our fantastic staff: to help them succeed if they need it and stay out of their way when they don’t. I also oversee our budget and enter into contracts. Council approves the annual budget. It’s my job to keep revenues and expenses in line, develop and maintain partnerships, and ensure that staff is enacting the strategic plan and the long-term vision set by Council.

Those are the nuts and bolts of the job, but I also think about the value proposition for members. How can AAG be the best organization possible for all geographers? For 100 years, it was enough to hold the Annual Meeting and deliver the journals in the mail every month. AAG is at its best when it connects members to each other and to the rest of the world—public, professional, and government. We can help them make connections at any stage of their careers and provide professional services. Our members’ research and ideas are essential to shaping a just and diverse world. AAG must ensure that geographers’ interests are represented in conversations about ethics, policy debates, public perception, and higher education. Geographers are influencers. And, we need to expand our membership base.

AMY: Well, a new model, depending on how it’s structured, would do exactly that: expand and broaden the membership base. As an aside, I have to admit one of the things that I used to love so much about my AAG membership was exactly what you mentioned—getting the journal in the mail. I loved that. But, then that journal just turned into a stack of guilt because I would get them in the mail, and I‘d say, “I’m reading this cover to cover today.” But, eventually, I would put it on top of the previous one, and they all just became this stack of guilt. I still always loved getting it in the mail.

I don’t want to put words into your mouth, so correct me if I’m wrong. But, it sounds like over the past year, you have been thinking that there need to be new models, new approaches to modernize the AAG, so it can be relevant to more groups of geographers. Currently, what do you think that we’re doing well, and where is there an opportunity to grow?

GARY: We have to continue fostering the multi-generational sense of belonging to the AAG. The glue that seems to hold us together is the bonds between mentor and student stretching back in time. We represent 364 academic departments, and I want us to consider this our core to protect and maintain. At the same time, we can offer more to professional geographers and grow our base. When I was interviewing and reading everything online about AAG to understand it, I noticed significant growth in membership numbers over the last 15 years. I thought it must be GIS professionals, and I was shocked to learn that wasn’t true. Instead, it was our international expansion, another area where I think we have lots of growth potential. My biggest regret by far is that I haven’t been to an Annual Meeting yet. So many members to meet and sessions to attend. I can’t wait to do that.

AMY: Okay. Let’s pivot a bit. I’m going to give you the question that I, along with, I assume, many academic geographers get from students and parents. And I’m curious how you answer it. What do you say when someone asks you, “what do geographers actually do?”

GARY: I think of geography as the intersection of people, place, and the environment, though it doesn’t have to be all those things all the time. Truly, you can’t understand anything in this world, past, present or future, without understanding places and spaces. Part of what makes geography so compelling to me is the endless number of ways to explore place and space—you can never run out of new things to learn.

That question and answer then naturally progressed to a discussion about academia and the relevance of geography. I will bring some of the remaining discussion into future columns, though not as an interview transcript. Until we can all meet again in person, I hope that these two parts of the interview allow you to know a bit more about the person who is now running the American Association of Geographers.

—Amy Lobben
AAG President and Professor at University of Oregon
lobben [at] uoregon [dot] edu

DOI: 10.14433/2017.0079

President's Column

An Interview with AAG Executive Director Gary Langham (Part 1)

August 31, 2020

While the AAG membership elects some of its governance (i.e. president, vice president, Council), the temporal constant in leadership is the Executive Director (ED). Historically, his tenure spans multiple presidents and many dozens of councilors. Since COVID-19 has prevented our new ED, Gary Langham, from meeting the membership and vice versa, I decided to interview him as an introduction into learning a bit about his perspectives, goals and personal history that led him to AAG.

We met on Wednesday, Aug. 19, which not coincidentally is the one-year anniversary of his first week in this role—half of which has been during the coronavirus pandemic. The interview lasted for over an hour, generating far too much to publish as a single column. So, I will cover the interview in two columns beginning with this piece as a summary of his path that led him to AAG. I have edited my questions and Gary’s comments below for brevity and clarity.

AMY: Let’s just start with some basics, like your background, the area of your formal training, and your experiences that led you to AAG.

GARY: I grew up in Sacramento, CA, within an academic family. My dad was a Ph.D. botanist and his father had a Ph.D. in plant genetics, so acquiring my own Ph.D. seemed natural to me. Looking into the future one could never know, but in hindsight this makes sense.

My dad and grandfather had interesting backgrounds. My grandfather, originally an Iowa farm boy, had to find a new path when the family farm was lost during the depression. Eventually, he ended up at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, in the early 1930s where he was the first Ph.D. recipient in plant genetics. Upon graduation, the government of Venezuela asked him to move there and lead a program for crops and genetics. He agreed and asked my grandmother, then a nurse, to marry him. They decided to go, despite speaking no Spanish at the time, and had four children there over the next 20 years.

During this time, he also became known as the father of the sesame seed. Sesame lays down its seed in pods that shatter when ripe, making it very time consuming to harvest. My grandfather was the first to find a variety that would open enough for machine harvesting, but not enough to lose the seeds. This side of the family continued researching and perfecting varieties of sesame for many years.

In addition to his scholarly abilities, my grandfather had an entrepreneurial spirit. Soon after he got there, oil production was booming in Venezuela, leading to a massive economic boom. He founded four large plant nurseries, supplying the growing numbers of businesses, hotels and factories around the country.

My dad was born and raised in Venezuela working in his dad’s plant nurseries. When my dad was 15, he went to the United States for the first time to finish school and later attend college. Inspired by what he learned from my grandfather, he sought his Ph.D. in plant biology and ecology. My father then taught at California State University in Sacramento for 38 years. He preferred teaching much more than research. I had the good fortune of growing up accompanying him on his botany and ecology field trips. We were around college students all of the time. During the summers, they would visit one day a week, so I grew up immersed in his love of teaching.

When I was seven years old, my dad discovered birding. He had been playing semi-pro ice hockey for fun, but he was getting too old and he wanted something else to do. He was also tired of the students asking what all the birds were on the field trips. So, he took this bird watching class. And it sounds silly to go from hockey to birding, but there is a whole world of competitive birding. Who knew?

What that meant for me, because he was so competitive, is whether I felt like it or not, I was in the back of a car going to look for birds every weekend from age seven to 13, and going all over the country traveling a lot with my parents. It was a lot of driving though, and I didn’t always love it. And of course, when you’re a kid, you absorb everything that you’re exposed to. So, now I was getting exposed to people, showing slides about birds and these professors would come over and they talk about their trips around the world. And, it was a great way to grow up. When I was 15, I started going back to Venezuela with my father. That was the first time my dad had been back in 30 years, and I kept going back for at least a month every year for the next 20 years.

Soon, he and I started leading birdwatching tours. Surprisingly, many people want to see birds bad enough that they will hire experts to show them all the species. Because I had spent so much time doing this, by the time I was 18 I was able to do it professionally. That’s how I put myself through college, leading trips all summer and over winter break. And, I did that for many years. When I came to my own schooling, I started off as an English major, finished that coursework and thought I was going to go to law school and do environmental law.

So, I was doing these birding tours, often with lawyers, and they’re like, “yeah, don’t do law school. Don’t do what I do. You should do birds or something like that. You should do ecology or conservation.” And, so I stayed on in college for a whole other major in biology. And, because I was putting myself through school with these tours, I could. I wasn’t in a hurry because I was getting paid to travel four months a year. In your twenties that’s really fun. Then I went back to college and took a class in, say, mammalogy, and then went all over the Americas seeing the mammals in the field. We were working all over the Americas: Canada, Costa Rica, and California in summer, and seven different trips in Venezuela that would rotate three per year over winter break.

This was an awesome way to grow up and go to college. But, eventually, I thought I’m just going to get a Ph.D. too. And what was great is because I had so much experience in South America already, it was easy to convince my advisers that I could go off and do research in South America because I’d already been doing it, essentially, for years. And it didn’t sound like a big risk. So, I got lucky and got into, arguably, the best ornithology program in the world at Cornell University. That was just a great experience. Although my Ph.D. is in ecology and evolutionary biology, I studied birds in South America.

Ecology spoke to my wide range of interests. And, just like with geography, you can never get bored with it because there’s so many different facets to it. After seven field seasons in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Peru, I wanted to go somewhere else. So, I did an NSF bioinformatics postdoc through UC Berkeley, with two years in the field and Queensland, Australia doing climate change research in the Wet Tropics and then a year back at Berkeley. Finally, I started working at Audubon, bringing birds, biology and policy together in conservation. Audubon was my job for 12 years before I started at AAG.

AMY: Actually, that was great. As you were relaying your story, I kept thinking about how your path seemed to be laid out for you. And, I feel like I just fell into geography. I spent my early life walking around in circles trying to figure out what I was going to do until I found this magic thing called geography. It just basically landed in my lap in college. And, then it transformed me.

At this point, our conversation transitioned to AAG, Geography, and higher education. I’ll continue the interview in a later column in which Gary will highlight his vision and goals for AAG.

—Amy Lobben
AAG President and Professor at University of Oregon
lobben [at] uoregon [dot] edu

DOI: 10.14433/2017.0078

President's Column

The Invisible and The Silent

July 31, 2020

I am the parent of an adult child with intellectual and developmental disabilities and have spent the past two decades watching how society (dis)engages with him. People avert their eyes. People pretend not to see him. People give him a wide berth in store aisles.

Some adults demonstrate shockingly bad behavior when he makes his noises or rocks back-and-forth. They display disapproval of his imperfect body and social conduct with facial expressions, comments, or gestures—such as picking up their groceries and moving to another checkout line. My reaction is a swift but reasonably (I think) calm tongue-lashing. Then, I always tell myself I won’t make a public display again. But I do.

Believe it or not, I’m happy when kids stare. At least they’re acknowledging his presence. And Jeffrey loves social interaction, if given the chance.

Amy Lobben’s son, Jeffrey, is wearing one of his favorite shirts.

That Jeffrey is singled out like this reflects how our society is obsessed with physical perfection. Examples are too numerous to list. Vanity sizing is just one example. Is that international? If not, I’ll explain. In America, as bodies get larger, sizing gets smaller. A women’s size 6 today was a size 12 fifty years ago. Because…we cannot have socially defined “imperfections” in our bodies. So, the fashion industry wisely adjusts their sizing over the years. It is remarkable how I have been a size 6 my entire adult life (I hope you hear the sarcasm regarding myself).

Society trains us to have low tolerance of imperfections in our own and others’ bodies. It’s no wonder that in the race to perfection, those with physical imperfections are ultra marginalized by society. And if we are intolerant of weight gain or imperfect eyebrows, imagine how intolerant we are with non-functioning eyes or legs. We have been taught to actively ignore those imperfections and the bodies they’re attached to. Even being near such a person in a grocery line is unendurable. The only distance at which this imperfection can be tolerated is so far away as to be indiscernible. It is the spatial scale of exclusion.

And that’s when it happens. People with disabilities become invisible. Through able-ism, they are silenced, left alone past the detectable edges of the universe that able-bodies and able-minded individuals inhabit.

Fortunately, an increasing number of countries have laws that protect the invisible and silent. In the United States, for example, organizations are required by law to make reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities.

Of course, “reasonable” is vague and open to opinion. For example, under the cover of “reasonable,” the state of Alabama developed their ventilator rationing policy, which said: “Persons with severe or profound mental retardation, moderate to severe dementia, or catastrophic neurological complications such as persistent vegetative state are unlikely candidates for ventilator support.”

Horrible, right? Let us not cast our righteous stones. Alabama was not alone in developing policies for ventilator support that excluded people with imperfections. Fortunately, disability advocacy groups and the U.S. Health and Human Services Department have now ensured that ventilator policies don’t discriminate based on imperfection.

The American Association of Geographers is not immune; historically, it has not been welcoming of people with disabilities. At the same time, we have mostly not been overtly discriminatory. There is no need for intervention by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. But we have created a culture and a structure that presents barriers to inclusion and participation of people with disabilities. For example:

Cost of our annual meeting remains a persistent (and often vocal) concern for many AAG members. AAG responds to this concern and attempts to defray costs when possible. Some strategies include: booking venues off-season, booking older venues, and including multiple locations in a single meeting. All of these strategies address membership demands to keep costs down. But, the result is an increase in barriers to participation for people with disabilities. Remember Denver 2005? Or Las Vegas 2009? Even without disabilities, it’s pretty hard to get around in a blizzard or between venues that are over 1km apart. How many times have you experienced overcrowded stairwells between sessions because the elevators were unable to support capacity? These are trade-offs that most membership welcomes in AAG’s responsive efforts to defray conference fees.
The AAG website is a disaster and does not come close to providing Universal Access. It’s not even screen-reader compliant. We are unique in our antiquatedness relative to most other large, professional organizations. This is ethically unacceptable and, for an organization that is always worried about recruiting more people to Geography, it’s not even good business.
The physical headquarters of AAG is Meridian Place. It’s far from being ADA compliant. People who use manual or motorized wheelchairs cannot enter the front door.

Why is this the current state of AAG? Historically, our collective membership has relegated issues of accessibility to the margins in favor of other priorities, such as saving money.

Fortunately, many accessibility issues are now being addressed by our new Executive Director, Gary Langham, and the AAG staff. For example, for the first time in my over 25 years in attending AAG meetings, child care for older children with disabilities was offered for the Denver 2020 meeting. Unfortunately, because of Covid, no one attended that meeting in person. But, the precedent was set. Don’t underestimate how big of a game-changer this support is for parents of older children with disabilities. For me, traveling as a parent of an older child with intellectual and developmental disabilities frequently represents an impossible obstacle. I’ve missed AAG meetings over the years because I couldn’t find support at home and because my son was too old for the child care provided by AAG.

As for examples two and three, though no concrete designs are yet in place, both website and Meridian Place renovations are actively being planned. ADA compliance and Universal Access are major parts of the discussion.

I am also delighted to announce that the AAG Council has unanimously supported the formation of a new AAG Accessibility Task Force. The members will identify the most pressing barriers to access within the AAG and develop strategies and guidelines to inform website design, building renovation, conference venue choices, and practices at conferences that enhance access.

I will always argue that supporting access for even one person with disability justifies great effort. However, if numbers are important to justifying the effort, we should consider why persons with disability are such a small proportion of AAG membership and conference attendance. For example, each year prior to the annual conference, AAG asks members for accommodation requests. Few requests are made. But, according to the Institute on Disability, the overall rate of people with disabilities (in the U.S.) is almost 13%. Disaggregated, disability increases dramatically by age. The most common disability reported is ambulatory.

But, AAG does not receive accommodation requests from 13 percent of the attendees (i.e. equivalent to disability prevalence in the overall population). Perhaps the disability rate for geographers is shockingly low? I doubt it.

July 26 was Disability Independence Day, commemorating the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act that was signed on the same day in 1990. Yet, this day seemed to come and go with little notice. How many people did you hear talking about it, marching about it, let alone celebrating it? As we experience the wave of social justice demanding amplification of marginalized voices, an important perspective is missing.

For too long AAG members with disabilities have been kept invisible and silent. Based on my brief tenure as Vice President and President, I have learned that many such individuals left the organization or stopped coming to conferences when barriers become too overwhelming. The Accessibility Task Force will advocate for AAG members with former and current disabilities, as well as that large portion of us who will, based purely on statistics, develop future disabilities. If we wish to have true lifetime members, we need to get ready now.

The task force’s charge over the next two years is to identify barriers and develop remediation recommendations, to move beyond the ADA and what is required by law to create true opportunities for access and inclusion for people with disabilities. We’re at the start of new AAG leadership and experiencing a nationwide awakening to the damages of exclusion and social injustice. Yes, there is much work to be done. But as we enter the dawn of the new decade, I am profoundly optimistic that this dawn will cast a bright light that makes us see those with disability and the barriers that prevent them from being in the AAG, the discipline of geography, and our society at large.

This is when the invisible become visible.

And that is when we as individuals and the AAG become true facilitators to access.

— Amy Lobben
AAG President

DOI: 10.14433/2017.0077

President's Column

The Spatial Scale of ‘We’

June 29, 2020

Every day around my town, I see signs of encouragement, most frequently — “We’re All In This Together.” That statement refers to the coronavirus pandemic, suggesting and assuming that we are all equally engaged in and affected by the pandemic. Similar messaging is delivered via emails, websites, and store speakers. Oregon’s public campaign takes the messaging even further, reminding us that “It’s up to you how many people live or die,” staying home ensures that we “don’t accidentally kill someone today.”

This messaging is clearly not limited to Oregon. We’re bombarded with fearful and dire characterizations of the force and magnitude of coronavirus. World leaders are asserting that coronavirus is “the worst public health crisis for a generation” (Boris Johnson), “we are at war” (Emmanuel Macron), or labeling themselves as “a wartime president” (Donald Trump).

At war? In his Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech, President Barack Obama summarized the conditions under which war is justified: if it’s a last resort, if force is proportional, and if civilians are spared from harm (i.e. collateral damage). He further reflected that throughout history, the notion of “just war” was rarely observed. Our world leaders are certainly invoking rhetoric of war to muster broad public support for their unprecedented actions in the fight against coronavirus. And, polls seem to show that we support these actions. Therefore, we are obliged to ask ourselves whether our actions are, in fact, just.

The World Health Organization collects and maintains statistics on pandemics, epidemics, endemics, and outbreaks. As only a few examples, in 2018 405,000 people died from malaria (out of 228 million known cases) and 1,500,000 people died from tuberculosis (from 10,000,000 known cases). The United Nations reports that 9,000,000 people die of hunger every year (out of over 820 million people who are chronically hungry). This already calls in question Boris Johnson’s assertion that Covid-19 is “the worst public health crisis for a generation.” But now include lockdown-related collateral damage and the UN predicts that the global coronavirus lockdowns will drive an additional 130 million people to the edge of starvation. The World Health Organization estimates that an additional 1.4 million people will die from tuberculosis as a direct result of the global lockdowns. The impact on other indices of health is dizzying, with surges in suicide, domestic violence, and mental health problems (the United States Centers for Disease Control reported in May that one-third of Americans are experiencing Generalized Anxiety Disorder, with rates higher for women, people of color, and people with less education). Factor-in unprecedented unemployment directly tied to coronavirus lockdowns that is surging across class, race, and gender lines, disproportionately affecting women, people with disabilities, and people of color. They bear the brunt of the crisis while we are protected in lockdown.

Apparently, this is what we accept as collateral damage in this war.

So, why doesn’t the world respond in the same way to malaria, tuberculosis, or starvation as it does to COVID-19? The answer is quite simple. Coronavirus has the audacity to attack wealthy white people. It affects visible people, rich people, important people, even world leaders. Those other maladies are primarily relegated to poor people in poor nations. In response to “the worst public health crisis for a generation,” these affected wealthy people adopted a large-scale extraordinary means in the “war” against coronavirus, while other maladies and the less privileged find funding and assistance dwindling. Lucica Ditiu, executive director of Stop TB Partnership succinctly summarizes the disparity.

“TB has been with us for thousands of years. For 100 years we’ve had only an infant vaccine and we have two or three potential vaccines in the pipeline. We look on in amazement at a disease that is 120 days old and it has 100 vaccine candidates in the pipeline. This is really fucked up.”

Ditiu’s statement illuminates the otherness in we. It illustrates the fluidity of how we define we. As a Geographer, I’m struck most by the sudden collapse of the social and spatial scale that defines the we in the rhetoric “we’re all in this together.” Shrinking the scale of we is demanded by our political leaders and supported by our society. But, usually, we lead very interdependent international-scale lives. Our political, economic, and social systems have created an international civilization that mandates the spatial scale of we to be global.

Or does it?

What happens when the we who are threatened are defined by ever-shrinking social and spatial scales of privilege? In the face of a pandemic, the admission to the world of we who can engage in lockdown is brutally strict. The more people we allow into our we, the less safe we are. It becomes necessary to expand the margins of “other” in our effort to define and protect the we.

We have been told that saving lives is more important than the economy. Whose lives? This new we defined by coronavirus is the very essence of privilege, including only those who have the choice to stay at home. And even among those with housing, it works only for those who remain employed and have a home that is uncrowded, safe, non-violent, clean, warm, and well stocked with food and potable water. Our we excludes any of those who cannot participate in the lockdown. This means that we accept a giant portion of the world’s population being collateral damage in this war against coronavirus.

During Spring 2020, I have watched with distress at how easy it has been for the privileged to re-shape their we to a remarkably small spatial and social scale. I’m further horrified by the acceptance of collateral damage that has been caused by the systematic and intentional re-forming of that we. But, of course, the idea of we is fluid. It always has been. Throughout history, membership in we has been defined by spatial and social boundaries. Coronavirus has just created another boundary defining a we: those who benefit from lockdown and those who are collateral damage from lockdown.

We’re all in this together?

No. We are not.

— Amy Lobben
AAG President

DOI: 10.14433/2017.0074

President's Column

Making Data Meaningful Or Geography’s Contribution to Data Science

June 1, 2020

Geography has always been about data. After all, the field was founded and developed over the search for more and better information. It was 200 years ago that Alexander von Humboldt, perhaps the most famous geographer, acquired field observations in the Andes Mountains and used these observations to make a series of connections. In her 2015 book, The Invention of Nature, Andrea Wulf writes how Humboldt presented data he had painstakingly collected about a mountain:

To the left and right of the mountain he placed several columns that provided related details and information. By picking a particular height of the mountain, one could trace connections across the table and the drawing of the mountain to learn about temperature, say, or humidity or atmospheric pressure, as well as what species of animals and plants could be found at different altitudes . . . All this information could then be linked to the other major mountains across the world, which were listed according to their height next to the outline of Chimborazo. (p. 103)

Alexander von Humboldt: 19th Century Data Scientist

Data continued to power geographical quests and queries. While many nineteenth-century geographers sought to find novel information about places they encountered, geographers in the twentieth century questioned how to make sense of it. These debates focused on factors of causation, the value of regional synthesis, and the spatial variations of select data. Later—as geographers came to critically inspect the sources, meanings, and uses of information—data continues to be the engine of our discipline.

So, it was particularly disheartening to hear the governor of Florida dismiss somebody with advanced degrees in geography as not being a “data scientist.” As most of you are probably aware, this remark came as justification for the firing of Rebekah Jones, the architect and manager of Florida’s acclaimed COVID-19 dashboard, purportedly because Florida officials did not like how she was presenting the data. Sadly, this follows along some other attempts at squelching inconvenient truths, like banning the use of the term “climate change.” In justification, Governor DeSantis said that Jones “is not a data scientist” because she has a degree in geography. Whatever the reasons for terminating an employee who had previously been praised and profiled, this is a particularly low blow.

And what is “data science” anyway? The Data Science Association, which ought to know, defines it as “the scientific study of the creation, validation and transformation of data to create meaning.” Accordingly, a data scientist “can play with data, spot trends and learn truths few others know.” This sounds an awful lot like what a lot of geographers do. Of course, I don’t need to tell you about how much data creation and analysis is involved in fields such as climatology, housing analysis, land science, big data, to name just a few. The major scientific development of our field, Geographic Information Science, is built around the manipulation of locationally based data. ESRI has developed a COVID-19 GIS Hub, and geographers have been active in examining COVID-19 in light of vulnerable people, economic data, and the spaces of everyday life.

The Florida governor’s drive-by slighting is yet more evidence of geographical ignorance and insensitivity. We have a long way in correcting for the type of geographical illiteracy that relegates half the world to “sh*t-hole countries” and where many cannot locate North Korea on a map. It begins early, as most school children still lack basic proficiency in geographical concepts. This has real consequences. It causes the public to overstate certain dangers to our security while minimizing perils at our front door.

We also need to consider how we got to a place where the very essence of what we do can be so easily dismissed. The state of Florida has several fantastic geography programs: strong PhD granting departments, excellent masters, bachelors and community college programs. Yet, the lack of general knowledge about our field still disappoints. It is easy to complain about willful ignorance, but who could imagine people saying that a trained economist knows nothing about trade, or that a botanist provides no guidance on ecosystems. Yet here is where we are. The hope of the AP Human Geography explosion—especially prominent in Florida—is that it will result in a generation of people who know what geography does and why it matters. Any other steps we can take—from responding forcefully to these misstatements, to seeding geographers in public agencies and private companies—will mercifully wash away such unfortunate views.

__________

When I was elected as vice president of the AAG in February 2018, I would have never thought that my presidential term would be quite so eventful. It began auspiciously, with the hiring of our new executive director and the prospect of new horizons, and it has ended with the upending of society as the pandemic has completely restructured how we live, work, and congregate, while the murder of George Floyd exposes once again the vicious and unrelenting racism embedded in our society.

If there was a theme to my presidential year, it lay in expanding the community of geographers. We have accomplished some terrific things including more assistance to the AAG regions and the prospect of a new international councilor. Unfortunately, the pandemic prevented us from experiencing the remarkable community manifested in our annual conference. This year, we missed the chance to come together in lecture halls, meeting rooms, hotel lobbies, bars, and cafes. We lost our chance to reunite with old friends, mentors, and students, to personally tell a colleague how much you enjoyed her article, to come together and plan further projects. To commune.

Given the circumstances, we have tried to carry forward, with virtual options and laying the groundwork for a return of physical conferences in the near future. We have also developed a remarkable taskforce to address the challenges brought about by COVID-19. My final presidential communication to you, later this month, will feature the results of that taskforce.

In the meantime, I want to thank everybody who has made this year so memorable and meaningful. The past presidents, especially Glen MacDonald, Sheryl Beach, and Derek Alderman have each helped me find my footing. I look forward to working with Amy Lobben and Emily Yeh in the coming year as we continue to confront the issues of the coronavirus and the desire to move ahead. The AAG staff have been a remarkable backstop. They have all been so wonderful, but I would especially thank Candida Mannozzi, Gary Langham, Becky Pendergast, Emily Fekete, and Oscar Larson for guidance at various key points over the year. And of course, I want to thank you—for trusting me as president, for emailing me your insights, and for helping me through this unprecedented year. Never forget that the American Association of Geographers is your organization. And never forget that our strength lies in our community. May we move forward together.

— Dave Kaplan
AAG President

DOI: 10.14433/2017.0072

President's Column

Facing an Existential Crisis or COVID-19 and the Long Term Future of Geography

May 5, 2020

It does not seem so long ago that people were talking about the compression of space and time, about the “ends of history and geography.” How recent events have obliterated this! The pandemic of COVID-19—with its echoes of the 1918 Spanish Flu and the great contagious scourges of the past—demonstrates again that “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” And how well this pandemic also affirms geography’s significance! The importance of place, of distance, of context, of networks—all show the enduring importance of geography and how central geographical concerns are in understanding the disease.

Yet while the ideas and methods of geography illuminate the transmission and effects of COVID-19, geography departments have been thrust into peril. Those of us who work in universities have likely heard the same dire budgetary forecasts. States are being hit with a double whammy of declining revenues from mandated shutdowns and an increased need for services. New student enrollments are down, sometimes way down from where they were a year ago.

Colleges have already refunded large sums of money to compensate students for room and board. And while none have rebated tuition, many students and their parents are upset with what they perceive as a true loss of educational value. The promise of true community—making friends, connecting with mentors, enjoying independence and the time away from home—no longer holds.

I can see it myself. My daughter had the last chunk of her freshman year at college snatched away from her. As a bassoon and chemistry double major, there was no way that online learning—however gamely proceeded—could replace what she would have received in a classroom, lab, or concert hall. As a professor, I understand just how faculty have struggled to keep classes going in this alternative format. But as a parent, I also empathize with students who see a diminution of their education.

None of us know now whether colleges and universities will be able to return to in-person classes in the fall. There are many possible scenarios. For those who are curious, The Chronicle of Higher Education provides an updated list. While a small number have announced mostly online plans, the majority of institutions have indicated that they “expect,” “plan,” “hope,” or “intend” to return to in-person classes in the fall. Others are taking a wait-and-see approach. As we all realize, higher education will take a huge hit next year; several institutions have already announced major cutbacks in positions and salaries. If in-person classes are not possible, my daughter is considering taking a semester off. This is just the reality and I expect many students would follow suit. Beyond the obstacles in accessing reliable internet connections, those students in less privileged positions may leave and not return—a true tragedy in the loss of human potential.

These are all things out of our control. But Geography departments must also look into doing things that are within our control. In my first presidential column I emphasized just how important the number of majors and enrollments are to our discipline’s health. This year, I have spoken with people whose departments are threatened. There are likely to be many more threats in the new academic year.

Geography departments must figure out the best ways to push against these headwinds. One way is to provide courses that will be most attractive to students. Students will be trying to understand this intrinsically geographical phenomenon, and departments can adjust to make sure that such courses are offered. A second way is to prepare to transition courses to an online or hybrid format if necessary, and make these plans known to administrators. I know that this will compromise a lot of geographical education, as it has already, but our field also enjoys certain strengths that make it more adaptable to a switch. For instance, many of the geospatial courses at Kent State are already taught virtually. If the worst happens and student numbers plummet, university leaders will be grateful for those points of light. The third approach is to ensure geographers are as visible as they can be in the university in responding to this crisis. We already have geographers with direct expertise in the areas of health and disease. We also can muster leadership in the evolving pedagogy, in providing faculty- and student-centered solutions to this urgency.

The way we meet now: AAG Executive Committee Meeting on Zoom (Sheryl L. Beach on IPhone)

As many of you have seen, the AAG decided at the Spring Council meeting (held on Zoom of course) that in these extraordinary times it needed to offer an extraordinary response. We therefore have proceeded to develop a COVID taskforce to develop solutions the AAG can provide to its members. We created five separate committees which will work in parallel through the months of May and early June:

The Departments committee will look at how the AAG might assist departments as they seek to survive—with some targeted investments and/or repurposing some staff time.
The Regions committee will see what we can do now to ensure the health of our nine regional divisions, especially given the uncertainties of next year. The Council just passed a set of proposals from the Regions taskforce intended to strengthen our AAG regions, and this will build on these initiatives.
The Members committee will focus on how best we can help AAG members in difficult situations: international members, members who work outside of academia, and precarious members.
The Students committee will attend to the additional stresses experienced by student members of the AAG, noting things that our association can do to ease their burden.
Finally, the Virtual Connections committee will examine some of the means by which the AAG can help invigorate how we educate, communicate and collaborate outside the physical realm. No matter what happens in the near term, we have crossed the Rubicon into a new world of virtual connections and this committee will suggest how the AAG can be at the forefront.

Once recommendations from the committees are made, a Blue Ribbon panel will be charged with evaluating the proposals and then sending them forward to the Council. At an extraordinary Council meeting, to occur at the end of June, we will come up with a final set of ideas to initiate in July. I will provide all of you with a final report on what we decide.

This has been such a difficult and trying time. It has been positively terrifying for those who have to worry about their health, their finances, their futures, or all of these together. Even those of us who are fortunate thus far have experienced the steady drain of lives lived without the physical contacts we cherish and with a future still so uncertain and bleak. To pretend that all this is not simply awful would be tone deaf and naïve.

But geography is strong. Geographers are resilient. Each and every one of you will do whatever it takes to allow our discipline to thrive. And your association will do everything in its power to help.

— Dave Kaplan
AAG President

DOI: 10.14433/2017.0071

President's Column

Doing Geography in the Age of Coronavirus or How is Everybody Coping?

March 31, 2020

You hear it from everyone you know: these are strange and frightening times. While most of us have witnessed major disease outbreaks from afar – Ebola, SARS, Swine Flu – it is another thing to encounter something so directly, so personally, so comprehensively. Pandemic: what once seemed part of a grim historical record has smashed into our contemporary reality.

If you are one of the lucky ones, you are reading this inside your comfortable home, self-isolating, dashing out only to gather the most essential items. If you are one of the lucky ones, you are struggling to refit your classroom activities, your research, your office operations, your interactions with colleagues, and your accessibility to other people within this extraordinary era – pushing everything from the physical to the virtual realm. Maybe you also have children at home who want to be with their friends, or now need to be home-schooled. A hassle for sure, but hopefully something we will come through.

Of course not everyone is so lucky. Some are still on the front lines, making this strange new world tenable for the rest of us. Medical care workers of all sorts, people working for essential services or industries, people who must put themselves in the middle of this pandemic every single day. Still others are ill from the disease or care for sickened loved ones. And then there are those who have lost their jobs because of virus-related shutdowns or whose existing precarity threatens to push them over the edge. Poor pupils worried about the loss of their school lunches and struggling without secure internet connections. Students blocked from conducting their long-planned research and who may also be anxious about paying their rent. Job seekers who have just seen their prospects shrivel up. And junior scholars fearing how this might affect their tenure clock.

In my columns I have tried to touch on issues that affect some of us. The coronavirus threat is an issue that affects ALL of us in a way unimaginable just a few short weeks ago. It is important for us to remember that while the effects and the worry are universal, the outcomes are uneven. What for some of us may be an annoying inconvenience can prove to be truly horrific for others.

For those of us leading the AAG, the past two months have been challenging but manageable. As it became clear that the novel coronavirus would be so much more than a small disruption, we made the difficult decision to cancel our annual meeting, the first cancellation since the United States entered World War II. While the decision seems obvious now, we knew that many, many of our members would be seriously disappointed as the annual meeting is one of the highlights of their year. We also realized that all of the careful planning conducted by the AAG staff and so many in the membership would be upended.

Even before we decided to cancel the in-person meeting, the staff was working on ways to allow some of the existing sessions to be conducted virtually. So far we have 150 virtual sessions ready for the AAG conference week. The platforms that are being assembled should allow for a fairly smooth operation for those who participate and attend. If you have already registered for the Denver meeting, you can attend these sessions free of charge and use your registrations for future meetings, while others pay a nominal fee. We will continue with the AAG council meeting (virtually of course) and hold the AAG business meeting. And we have a prepared a wonderful book, The Rocky Mountain West: A Compendium of Geographic Perspectives, which is available on the AAG website.

Of course there are so many aspects of the AAG annual meeting that cannot be done virtually and several of these will be postponed. Many of the themes for Denver will continue in Seattle (along with some new themes) and participants are invited to continue their sessions as they had already intended. I have reached out to the marquee participants for our Denver meeting and most have agreed to return next year. The presidential plenary will be a joint affair with president-elect Amy Lobben and myself looking at issues of marginalization, accessibility, and expanding the geography community. Past-president Sheryl Luzzadder-Beach will be able to present her address next year. We are working to make sure all of this year’s honorees will get their rightful due at next year’s Awards Luncheon. And the best news is that the AAG will host the annual meeting in Denver after all, in March 2023. It will be an opportunity for us to make good on all the work and preparations conducted by the local arrangements committee and local professionals.

Our annual meetings are so much more than sessions. They are opportunities for us to affirm our place in the geographical community. They provide a way for people to meet and connect with those they have only encountered on paper or online. They give students a much-needed boost in their professional development and networking. And they reignite old friendships and foster new ones. To continue with this, we hope that geographers consider some of the other options offered in Fall 2020. I have long championed the value of regional meetings, and this will be an opportunity for many of us to explore these. While we had intended to provide publicity for the regional meetings in Denver, we will be sure to advertise these over the summer. Other meetings, such as Race Ethnicity and Place, Geography 2050 and the Applied Geography Conference should go forward as we overcome this affliction.

How this novel coronavirus changes us is open to speculation. But I have no doubt that the modifications to our society and to our geography will be profound, exceeding the transformations wrought by 9/11. Everything from personal hygiene to store design will harbor the possibility of a new pandemic. Right now, geographers can provide the necessary analytics and visual tools to help all of us understand the impact of the virus today. Looking toward the future, there will be ample opportunity for geographers to unpack all of the implications of this unprecedented and devastating disease.

But now is a time to step back. Many people are hurting. Many more are scrambling. First, take care of yourselves and your families. Then take care of those to whom you are directly connected – your students and the people who depend on you – inasmuch as you can do so. Look out for those who may be fearful and alone; there are more like this than you think. Be kind to one another. Keep your physical distance, but preserve and enhance your social community. The world has become a scary place. We need connections – now more than ever. Please help make these connections happen.

— Dave Kaplan
AAG President

DOI: 10.14433/2017.0070

President's Column

Going Global or How Best to Recognize the Internationalization of the AAG; Plus – an Addendum to my Previous Column

February 28, 2020

We have always been the “AAG” but five years ago the membership overwhelmingly decided to change the full title from the Association of American Geographers to the American Association of Geographers. I remember being part of the Council when this change was discussed. It went beyond verbal tweaking and reflected our best efforts to recognize that the AAG was no longer just an organization of U.S.-based geographers. Instead we had become a community in which geographers from many countries gather.

The value of internationalization was promoted especially by past President Kavita Pandit. In her columns, she recognized that higher education has become more international. With geography leading the way, we must welcome and validate students from around the world and incorporate study abroad curricula in our programs. Kavita was not alone in pointing to the importance of international geography. Past presidents such as Victoria Lawson, Ken Foote, and Derek Alderman, among many others have spoken to the need to extend our reach and our knowledge beyond national borders.

For me the internationalization of geography and of the AAG has been a godsend. Over 20 years ago I met a number of geographers from Finland who regularly attended the national meetings — resulting in long and fruitful collaborations that continue to this day. I have also collaborated with geographers from France and Italy who regularly partake in our yearly conference. And I am delighted to renew friendships each year with geographers from a whole host of different countries.

Unlike the International Geographical Union (IGU), the AAG is not structured as a super-organization made up of various national geographic societies. But we are growing ever more international and becoming a vital meeting space for geographers from around the world. In 2018, 3,476 members came from outside the United States, comprising 31 percent of all members. This is up from 22 percent international membership in 2013. The following charts show the breakdown by the largest countries and then by broad regions. International membership is led by Canada, China, and the United Kingdom, with over 90 other countries represented. Many of these geographers travel to our annual meeting to present and to network. Here the international presence is even greater, with fully 36 percent of attendees arriving from outside the United States.

This international presence adds tremendous value to our organization. This has been recognized already in several ways. We have implemented the Developing Regions initiative, which provides low-cost membership to geographers in several countries where access might otherwise be too dear. On the editorial side, we just selected two new Annals editors, both of whom work at institutions outside the United States. And about a quarter of our editorial boards are also international. What is more, I have been working with the presidents of the Canadian Association of Geographers and the European Association of Geographers to foster greater collaboration across national geographical societies.

We should move forward to the next level. Now is the time to consider international representation that better reflects our membership and puts force behind the meaning of our name change in 2015. For this reason, I am in favor of adding a dedicated international councilor, somebody who comes from an institution outside the United States. Right now international geographers have little representation. All U.S.-based geographers also belong to regional divisions, with their own regional councilor. Yet, with the exception of a few Canadian provinces folded into these AAG divisions such as NESTVAL, there is no dedicated representation for international members.

Why should we accord international members this special status? As with other groups, we could try to increase international representation through the nominations process, creating a larger pool of non-U.S. candidates for our existing “national” councilor and vice president slots. But this would be slow and unsteady — with few guarantees. In the last 10 years, we have had only two vice president and three councilor nominations from outside the United States. Of these, only past President Audrey Kobayashi from Canada was elected under our standard process.

Moreover, the AAG is intrinsically geographical in its own organization, befitting the nature of our field. Just as we divide the United States into nine geographical regions for the sake of governance, to bring an AAG experience closer to home and to represent the concerns of different parts of the United States, so we should pursue the unique advantages of recognizing the geographies of the one-third of our membership who do not live in any of these regions.

A dedicated international councilor would ensure that the AAG Council always has a representative from outside the United States. And while “international” encompasses the vastness of the world, there are relevant concerns that an international councilor could address and that would be common to members from Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Such concerns include the difficulties of access to U.S.-based meetings, potential linguistic issues, visa problems (particularly prevalent in this political environment), and better strategies for linking the AAG to geography societies around the world. I believe that an international councilor would add a great deal to our discussions and provide a hitherto underrepresented perspective.

While we have a team of people working on the particulars, I should emphasize that this reflects my personal views. The details behind creating this position will need to be worked out and approved by Council, and I will not go into them here. We may also consider a trial run, much as we did with our Student Councilor, so that we can see how well this idea works in practice and make modifications if need be. But make no mistake — the time has come to represent the international reach of our organization. The time has come to elect an International Councilor.

Addendum

As the latest in the lineup of AAG presidents charged with writing a weekly column, I would like to thank all of you who offer praise, reflections, insights, and corrections around the themes brought out each month. February’s column, Beyond the Academic 1 Percent, garnered more than its usual share of comments. Some of you noted omissions in my map of geography programs, which has been quite helpful in revising our comprehensive database of geography programs. Others agreed with the main premise of the column, in the need for greater institutional diversity and sympathy with the basic points.

There were also some critiques related to what was perceived by some as my denigrating geography at elite universities, especially Ivy League universities. My “unpopular” opinion was intended to be controversial and I will stick by my major view: the lack of large Ph.D. programs at Yale, Harvard, Princeton, and others has had some drawbacks, especially in regard to visibility — as many have pointed out over the years. But judging from the evidence among other disciplines, it has also had a salutary effect of making institutional geography more equitable. People can disagree about which is more important.

One thing we can all agree on, however, is the value of having strong geography programs at elite private institutions. Like all of you, I would like to see geography as an option for every undergraduate major. Many students tend to pick colleges first and then consider their majors, and it is a serious lapse not to have a geography degree among the options. Strong geography programs at colleges like Middlebury, Macalester, Vassar, and Mount Holyoke (to name just a few) should be encouraged and replicated across the country. The undergraduate geography program at Dartmouth College has been a true standout in this regard. Its faculty continue to contribute to the discipline while they introduce geography to legions of highly talented and demographically diverse students, who go on to become leaders in the field. These institutions are truly beacons in our geographical landscape, and our discipline would be a lot poorer without their presence and energy.

— Dave Kaplan
AAG President

DOI: 10.14433/2017.0069

President's Column

Beyond the Academic 1 Percent Or How to Create a More Inclusive and Equitable Academic Culture

January 30, 2020

Social media can be dangerous. I recently read a post on Twitter, sent by a non-geographer, which seemed to lament geography’s absence from the Ivy League and similarly selective private institutions.

If I could share an unpopular opinion, I’m glad that geography does not have a large representation in the Ivy League. Not because I do not consider geography worthy of Harvard, Yale or Princeton. Nor because I don’t think geography should be available to every college student. Rather I dislike how Ivy League institutions foster elitism in American higher education, in a manner that could distort our discipline. One recent essay argued that “Ivy League mania” warps students. And articles have shown how a small group of exclusive universities produce the lion’s share of professors.

It is an academic 1% who gain influence, prestige, and resources far out of balance with the rest of the higher education workforce. Expanded beyond this super elite class, we also have a group—call them the 10%—of professors who are either tenured or tenure track at Research 1 institutions.¹ This is followed by another 6% of tenured/tenure-track faculty at other research universities, 10% at bachelors/masters institutions, 5% at community colleges, and 23% of faculty listed as non–tenure track. The rest—almost half— are relegated to part-time status and may have little control over their professional lives and oftentimes suffer living standards close to poverty levels.

Well, geography does not have places like Stanford or Duke calling most of the shots. Rather we are focused at a number of large state universities, some notable private universities, and a host of smaller public institutions and community colleges. And relative to other disciplines, our balance is good. Yet we still suffer issues of inequality. Just as wealth inequality can build upon itself, providing the lion’s share of benefits to those at the top, so can academic inequality engender a privileged class of the professoriate; folks who reap disproportionate benefits of connection, abundant resources, miniscule teaching loads, and who also enjoy the benefit of the doubt because of where they are located. And so much of it depends on luck! I remember a couple of graduate school friends, both with strong and basically identical CVs. One landed a tenure-track appointment at a prestigious flagship university, while the other has been scraping by in adjunct positions. These random outcomes proliferated, affecting each of their professional lives.

The notion of precarity, often affecting those people without stable permanent employment, is worthy of an entire column. As universities shift their hiring away from full-time tenure-track faculty, adjunct labor fills the gaps. Former President Ken Foote has outlined ways that our departments and institutions can support contingent faculty, from offering some degree of stability, to better options to collaborate and contribute to the curriculum and the departmental life. Certainly from an institutional perspective we should find better ways to reward contingent faculty commensurate with their talents.

Professors lucky enough to obtain full-time employment find themselves in a variety of job environments and at different types of institutions with varied research expectations, teaching loads, and opportunity to mentor graduate students. Some geographers stand alone in a department with other faculty; other geographers are part of a large unit with 20 or more faculty and an opportunity to specialize in their specific subfield.

This map displays the diversity of geography programs, based on our development of an extensive database that shows geography programs by highest degree offered.²

The contribution of the smaller departments should not be overlooked. As opposed to many large, research-oriented departments, where much of the focus may be on PhD students, geography at smaller state universities and at private colleges relies on providing a premium student experience with lots of undergraduate engagement, study-away experiences, and tight ties between students and faculty. When attending regional meetings, I often see faculty from these institutions bringing their students to their very first conference. At the same time, a great deal of research gets done by faculty here. They are all expected to publish, many get external grants, and as a bonus, they often share their research experience with undergraduates.

Community colleges are key aspects of our geography universe and they simply do not get the recognition they deserve. We have over 75 community colleges in the United States that offer an associate’s degree in geography (see map). Not only are a plurality of all undergraduate students enrolled in public two-year institutions, but if we are looking at true diversity within our discipline, this is where we start. Undergraduates from poorer backgrounds are much more likely to attend community colleges. African Americans, Native Americans and Latinos also show higher representation at two-year colleges. Beyond community colleges, we should be looking at Historically Black Colleges and Universities as well as Tribal Colleges. These too are intrinsic aspects of our geography universe, and we can expand our numbers by welcoming new geographers from all demographic backgrounds.

The AAG recognizes this institutional diversity in some important ways. There are affinity groups for stand-alone geographers and for community college professors. The AAG has established a Program Excellence Award (just won this year by Lakeland Community College!) and special travel grants for community college students. In addition, we have done a good job in terms of AAG governance. Participation at the Council and on AAG Committees could be a bit more representative, but shows a commitment to institutional diversity.

One example of possible improvement within the AAG lies in the composition of our journals’ editorial boards. Geographers at all types of institutions conduct research and editorial boards ought to reflect this. Yet this is not the case. The composition of the editorial boards of four major AAG journals—The Annals, the Professional Geographer, the AAG Review of Books, and GeoHumanities—shows an overwhelming preference for professors from PhD, mostly R1, institutions. Several institutions like Berkeley and Arizona State have five or more. While professors who teach at non-PhD programs make up well over half of membership, they constitute only 20 percent of all AAG editorial boards. The distribution is lopsided enough that a colleague of mine was discouraged from applying for an editorial position because their type of institution was not represented on the editorial board. This is a persistent bias and one I am guilty of myself.

Geography in the United States does not have a 1%. We have no academic over-class gazing down from the Olympian heights of the Ivies and Ivy-adjacents. But we do have a privileged 10–15% slice of tenured faculty at PhD-granting institutions and especially at Research 1 schools. It is important that we recognize the very inequalities that exist within our field. Geography, and the AAG as its premier organization, needs to improve its record on institutional diversity. It means that the field must work harder to expand the community of geography by aggressively including faculty who work at smaller institutions, often as stand-alone geographers, at HBCUs, and at community colleges. It means departments must consider hiring PhD students who come from a variety of institutions, if their CVs warrant. It means that, as with many forms of inequality, people of good will can blindly reinforce the advantages accrued to a very few members of our discipline. It is time for us to acknowledge our privilege and truly open up our field to the widest numbers of geographers.

¹This data is derived from National Center for Education Statistics. The breakdowns by faculty workforce were provided to me by the American Association of University Professors.

²Map created by Jessica Reese. This is based on a database developed by myself and Fiona Allan of all departments providing some sort of geography degree. Some departments are listed as offering a PhD even if it is in a fairly specialized area. Let me know if you see any omissions and I will add these to the database.

— Dave Kaplan
AAG President

DOI: 10.14433/2017.0067

President's Column

The Publishing Paradox or How the Publishing Model May be Broken

January 1, 2020

Among the familiar litany of New Year’s resolutions, many of you may have promised yourselves that 2020 would be the year to finally finish that book or write that article. In other words: to PUBLISH.

Publishing is a huge part of academic life, the coin of the realm. There may have been some mythical past when graduate students could obtain their PhD and land a decent academic job without having to publish a single thing. When tenure in research universities required just a few thoughtful articles or perhaps a book. And when those in predominantly teaching institutions could get by with producing something once or twice in a career.

Fast forward to our day. Rare is the PhD who lands a job without a CV listing several publications. And institutions of all stripes demand a quiver of accepted articles from their tenure=track hopefuls. It is not unusual to see professors within research universities generating several articles every single year, racking up Google Scholar hits and the citations to go with them. Some twitter posts look like “to-do” lists of publishing projects promised and completed. Working over weekends and holidays has become the norm.

This greater frenzy of publication is borne out by the magnificent growth in journal publications each year. The most recent figure showed some 2.5 million articles published in 28,000 journals. This is driven in part by an increase in articles per capita. The chart below shows the number of scientific publications for full professors at research universities in geography and area studies between 1996 and 2014. It shows that average article generation more than doubled, and this for a group with few worries about tenure and promotion.

Average publications by geography full professors at research universities in 15 countries. Chart from Nikolioudakis et al, 2015 (https://www.int-res.com/articles/esep2015/15/e015p087.pdf).

All those would-be articles cycle through a publication system that has remained the same at its research core: authors who submit academic papers, other professors who kindly examine these submissions and provide comprehensive reviews, editors who orchestrate the whole process from beginning to end, and an audience of mostly academics ready to consume the scholarly output.

The truly dramatic changes have occurred in the larger publication universe. Two decades ago, there were many publishers such as Carfax, VH Winston, Pion, and Blackwell. In addition, there were still a number of independently published society journals. Many professors would take out personal subscriptions.

Today, most journal publishing has steadily consolidated into five or six big houses. The chart below shows the situation for all English-language journals. For just the social sciences, the top five publishers account for about 70 percent of all articles, compared to 15 percent in the early 1990s. These publishers sell journals to academic libraries as part of a package, but the costs of the packages can be stratospheric. Elsevier was recently embroiled in controversy because European libraries and the University of California felt that it charged far too much per article. Adding salt to these wounds is information that Elsevier makes about a 37 percent profit margin—selling back to academics content that these same academics have already produced. The other publishing houses employ the same basic model of selling to professors what the professors have already produced for free [full disclaimer, I am an editor for two journals published by Taylor & Francis].

Journal title shares by major publishers. Data from International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers, 2018 (https://www.stm-assoc.org/2018_10_04_STM_Report_2018.pdf).

Very little of the publishing profits—which can be staggering—dribbles down to the people who are the beating heart of the publication process. To be sure, publishing houses offer major benefits in production, allowing articles to be copy edited, proofread, typeset and put online in a matter of days. The ability of the average scholar to access thousands of titles—crisp and in full color—without ever having to leave her office is nothing short of phenomenal. Archives can be summoned with the click of a mouse. For those who can afford it, these companies expedite the smooth transmission of information. But by acting as consolidators and distributors, journal publishers position themselves to sell scientific knowledge provided to them for free.

Of these, the only person within the research circle who gets paid—maybe a few thousand dollars a year—is the editor, mainly to cover expenses. The authors sometimes have to pay to cover page charges, especially if they want their article to be freely available to the readership. (The promotion of open access, which journals have jumped all over, can be quite costly with fees in excess of $2000 per paper.) In all but rare occasions, the reviewers review for absolutely nothing (and in some disturbing situations will get junior colleagues and students to review in their name), and merit or promotion committees seldom bestow academic credit for this consuming labor.

Added to the morass has been the proliferation of so-called predatory journals. I am sure that every one of you has received a solicitation, perhaps several times a week, asking whether you want to publish in a journal with a fishy title (International Journal of Global Technology and Science Research anyone?). These journals come with all the trappings—submission guidelines and editorial boards—and they promise a lot: super-fast review (within days!) and sometimes offers to write the paper for you. Yet the fees are onerous and the articles themselves rarely get circulated. With so many legitimate journals out there encouraging open access fees, and the pressure to publish, it is little wonder that such journals are seen as viable options.

Of course, there are a host of ethical issues that involve societies like the American Association of Geographers. We have been able to negotiate some lucrative contracts with our publisher, Taylor & Francis, which pay many of our bills. But this also perpetuates the high prices academic institutions are charged for subscriptions, and can put scientific knowledge out of reach for people without access.

So given the fact that journal publishing is not only here to stay but proliferating, how do we make the process better? Some journals have chosen to avoid the big presses: Acme, Focus, and Fennia to name three. Especially if tenure committees can come unshackled from the need for metrics, such publications provide a place for solid and alternative scholarship.

We can also devise better ways to validate the process of peer review. As an editor, I badger experts in various topics to take several hours of their time to provide a critical service to an anonymous someone. There is no monetary compensation for this, nor does it make a mark on most CVs. Yet at least half say yes, and many of the others apologize and promise to review at a different time. The entire edifice of scholarly publishing would crash without peer reviewers, yet they are often as taken-for-granted as wall studs. It would be nice if there was also a way to reward peer reviewers in some fashion and perhaps the whole process might be revamped.

The paradox of publishing is threefold. We require graduate students and professors to publish in academic journals if they hope to advance. Yet authors and peer reviewers work for free and journal editors for very little, while article fees increase and publishing houses accrue the profits. Academic societies such as the AAG rely on contracts with journal publishers to secure some of these profits, essentially benefitting from the free labor of their members.

To abandon the system would mean altering the rewards intrinsic to academia and forgoing the revenues now vital to scholarly associations. But the University of California’s termination of their contract with Elsevier earlier this year demonstrates that this system may not be sustainable in the long term. We all have a stake in the outcome. I hope that geographers will lead the way in developing a fairer and more reasonable model for journal publishing.

— Dave Kaplan
AAG President

DOI: 10.14433/2017.0066