Busy multiethnic partners working together in a meeting room to discuss some urgent matters.

Safeguarding Academic Freedom: A Discussion for Department and Program Chairs

October 27, 2025, 11:00am Eastern Time (US and Canada) – October 27, 2025, 12:30pm Eastern Time (US and Canada)

Leaders of geography departments and in allied disciplines are among those experiencing intense, increasing threats and pressures to faculty’s public speech, teaching, and research areas, along with institutional constraints and funding cuts that add uncertainty and dread to campus atmospheres.

How can program leaders preserve as much academic freedom as possible in the face of the forces that constrain classroom subject matter, the direction of service and research on campus, and perhaps most especially, the freedom and ability of scholars to speak with clarity and frankness about their work?

Sponsored by AAG and the AAG Healthy Departments Committee, this panel will acquaint department chairs with the experience and advice of their peers, as well as resources and supports of the American Association of University Professors. The session will devote time at the end of the panel for questions and answers, with time for breakout discussions among participants.

For the purpose of encouraging open dialogue, this session will not be recorded.

Share your ideas with us! AAG hopes to develop future programming to support department chairs and program leads in their work to support academic freedom, faculty, and students at their institutions. Please take a moment to respond to this brief poll about the issues you face as a department leader.

Registration fees

AAG members: FREE!

Individuals whose AAG membership is current may attend the event at no cost. Registration is required and may be completed by selecting the button above and following the directions to sign in to your AAG account.

Non-AAG members: $350

Non-members may choose to pay the one-time fee or, instead, join AAG to register for free as a member. Membership entitles you to join AAG’s knowledge community of department chairs in geography and related disciplines. Find out more about AAG’s member benefits.

Participants

 

Photo of David KaplanDavid H. Kaplan, Ph.D.

Introductions

David (Dave) Kaplan Dave Kaplan is a professor of geography at Kent State University and a past president of the American Association of Geographers (AAG). He currently chairs the AAG Healthy Departments Committee,  which works to enhance the future health and excellence of geography departments. Dave is also serving as the Chair of Kent State’s Faculty Senate. His longstanding interest in aspects and geographic manifestations of ethnic identity have led him to research at several scales, from urban segregation patterns in cities around the world, to national identity, borderlands, and separatist movements. He is editor-in-chief of the Geographical Review.

 

Alexander B. Murphy, Ph.D., J.D.

Moderator and Panelist

Alexander (Alec) Murphy is also a past president of AAG, and a former chair of the AAG Healthy Departments Committee. He is professor emeritus of geography at the University of Oregon, where he held the James F. and Shirley K. Rippey Chair in Liberal Arts and Sciences from 1998-2019. A political, cultural, and environmental geographer with regional emphases in Europe and the Middle East, he has been instrumental in building the presence of geography in education, including his leadership of the effort to add geography to the College Board’s Advanced Placement Program. In the early 2000s he chaired the National Academy of Sciences — National Research Council Committee charged with identifying “Strategic Directions for the Geographical Sciences.”

 

Ruota LumpantobingRotua Lumbantobing, Ph.D.

Panelist

Rotua Lumbantobing is a professor of economics and chair at Western Connecticut State University. A sports economist, her research includes work on NBA expansion, Asian American diversity, and a forthcoming book on the U.S. women’s national soccer team examined through the lenses of race, class, and gender. As president of the AAUP chapter at Western Connecticut State University, she led faculty through the challenges of the COVID-19 crisis, defended academic rights, organized labor actions, and fought to preserve the Social Sciences Department during a politically manufactured budget crisis. Now national vice president of the AAUP, she continues to lead and organize in the struggle against the corporatization of higher education and the escalating attacks on academic freedom and shared governance.

 

Paul Haridakis, Ph.D., J.D.

Panelist

Paul Haridakis is a professor and the director of Communications Studies at Kent State University. He conducts research on media uses and effects, law, public policy, new communication technologies, sports communication, freedom of speech and the history of communication studies. His recent work has focused on the role of YouTube and other social media in political campaigns and interpersonal communication, user-generated content, mediated interactivity and First Amendment issues related to the regulation of content in various media such as the internet and television. He teaches courses such as Freedom of Speech; Media Use and Effects; Political Communication; Communication in an Information Society; Sports Communication; Media, War & Propaganda; Research Methods; and Communication Theory. He also is a lawyer.