Recent attacks on higher education threaten our foundational rights, such as academic freedom and advances in diversity, equity, and inclusion in academia. In a multi-part series, I relate these things to AAG’s history, core values, and work in the future.

Part I: Academic Freedom

Founding AAG and Higher Education

When the AAG was founded in 1904 as a new professional society, higher education, as we now know it, was still relatively new. Only after the Civil War did modern colleges and universities take shape in the United States, aiming to give broad education to the general public. Before this shift, universities served more as training grounds for the clergy and the elite.^1,2

As America sought to rebuild itself after the war, the value of an educated workforce and one with new skills was deemed essential: skilled labor replaced manual labor as the country increasingly moved from agrarian to industrial. Public institutions of higher learning joined private ones across the country. Education became available to more and more people, and crossed economic, social, racial, and gender boundaries, while leaving significant barriers for many.^1,3

During this time, the discipline of geography emerged as a distinct branch of study and research. More institutions required more trained experts. Geography shifted from surveys, cataloging, and mapping to deeper analysis and understanding of people and places. The career of the first AAG President, William Morris Davis, showcases all these changes. Trained at Harvard’s Lawrence Scientific School in 1869, he got a master’s in mining engineering in 1870. He then joined a geographic expedition in Colorado before working as a meteorologist in Argentina. This broad background helped Morris when he then moved on to geomorphology. By 1890, Morris was a full Harvard professor, merging meteorology, geology, and geography. His teaching and publishing helped establish numerous theories and subfields.^1,3

An Association to Strengthen and Support Geography

At the time of AAG’s founding, societies that focused on geography tended towards exploration and wealthy elites. When the National Geographic Society (NGS) was founded in 1888, it provided a much-needed home for academics like Morris, but it also faced financial challenges. When its second president, Alexander Graham Bell (yes, that Bell), proposed that the NGS start a non-technical publication to bring content to the masses and thus increase membership and revenue, Morris was concerned. There really wasn’t a place for serious academics to publish technical research and discuss the still-evolving field of geography. Thus, in 1904, he and colleagues founded the AAG: a professional society with the primary goal of hosting intellectual exchange and defining the best practices within the profession.¹

AAG’s Core Mission

The AAG’s core mission is to support the profession and foster intellectual exchange. Protecting academic freedom—the right of professional academics to pursue research and teaching free from political interference—is a core value of the AAG. Academic freedom in higher education benefits society through the production and dissemination of knowledge. This benefit is as true in research as it is in the classroom. Modern higher education cannot succeed without academic freedom; without it, all the benefits society gains from free inquiry are threatened, diminished, or lost.

While we may know this is true, it is easy to take it for granted. Today, we see renewed efforts to curtail academic freedom at a scale and fervor not seen since the “Red Scares” after WWI and WWII. Culminating in the late1960s, political attacks on ideas in higher education were rampant, threatening the independence that great research and teaching depend upon.² Importantly, these political tensions resulted in two Supreme Court rulings, Sweezy v. New Hampshire in 1957 and Keyishian v. Board of Regents in 1967, clearly established academic freedom as a special case of the First Amendment, covering professors, institutions and, to a lesser extent, students.⁴

Our Nation is deeply committed to safeguarding academic freedom, which is of transcendent value to all of us and not merely to the teachers concerned. That freedom is therefore a special concern of the First Amendment, which does not tolerate laws that cast a pall of orthodoxy over the classroom.”

—Justice Earl Warren, Keyishian v. Board of Regents, 385 U.S. 589 (1967)⁴

Although the boundaries and extent of academic freedom have continued to be tested, the breadth of these rulings help explain why it has felt so settled in my lifetime. But is it really settled? As of December 2023, even before current federal actions, more than 30 states had enacted some version of Florida’s “Stop Woke Act”.⁵ Now, the current administration seems determined to bring these actions to the federal level by curtailing DEI efforts and hiring practices, policing speech and teaching, and wielding funding cuts and accreditation threats.⁶

AAG is committed to protect academic freedom in higher education. Although AAG’s commitment to academic freedom is infused throughout our working principles, it is most clearly expressed through policy and advocacy.⁷ We support these in two ways. First, AAG seeks to connect professional geographers to policymakers and decision-makers. Geographers’ insights and methods can help society make better decisions, laws, and governance. Second, it seeks to protect the essential requirements of professional geographers: funding and academic freedom. Laws that do not support these essential ingredients diminish the discipline and its practitioners to the detriment of geography and society.

The Power of Science Relies on Academic Freedom

Science is powerful because it questions itself and both encourages and rewards practitioners who challenge established principles. Academic freedom is critical to empowering science and similar approaches to the world. Ideas must be free to flourish, to be critiqued, discussed, and sometimes discarded. As with every human endeavor, the process of science can suffer from any human foible, but in the long term, even seemingly insuperable challenges become solutions in the next edition of textbooks. How those texts and lessons are taught to the next generation of researchers is critical, too. The ability for politically unpopular ideas to be discussed and debated is a cornerstone of academic freedom.³

In the literature, academic freedom is achieved through peer review. The key controls are other highly trained specialists who judge the scholarly value of submissions. In principle, only well-researched and carefully documented ideas are published as quality control. But mistakes can be retracted, ideas overthrown, and new ideas dominate.

Science is therefore not final any more than it is infallible.”

—William Morris Davis

Davis’s work showcases how science is ultimately self-correcting, but not always in the short term. Infamous for his now-discredited ideas about environmental determinism, his misapplication of Darwinian thinking to explain patterns of human civilization, was an unfortunate contribution to the literature.⁸ Future publications show how his thinking was incorrect, but the damage done to geography as a discipline is not self-correcting.³

The value of a professional society is to aid the production of knowledge and hasten the self-correcting cycle. It creates spaces where ideas can be shared, discussed, and debated at conferences. It also creates spaces where peer review leads to publications in journals. Its neutrality allows peer review to function, all while championing academic freedom in its venues and the institutions of its members. Additionally, it creates spaces where practitioners can get career advice and assistance from peers or mentors. All these spaces are aided by a set of professional codes of conduct and ethics that the professional society helps establish and enforce.

Conclusion

The American Association of Geographers (AAG) is a professional academic society representing the professional interests of its members. What should you expect from your professional society, especially during fractious political times? I would argue that it’s the same as any other time: To help you succeed in your profession, grow the profession, support robust intellectual exchange in journals and conferences, set professional standards and ethics, and help connect professionals and their expertise to society for the benefit of all. To support the needs and interests of professional and aspiring geographers. To support and aid the career paths of geographers. To make geography available to all.

When AAG’s founders created it, they did so because the emerging discipline of geography needed these things to thrive. The world has changed a lot since 1904, but that need remains, and the AAG’s core values and mission also remain constant.

Footnotes

¹ Preston E. James and Geoffrey J. Martin, The Association of American Geographers, the First Seventy-Five Years, 1904-1979 (Association of American Geographers, 1978).

² Keith E. Whittington, You Can’t Teach That! The Battle over University Classrooms (Polity Press, 2024).

³ In telling our history, we must acknowledge that, even as higher education was available to more people, many were still left out. Part 2 of this article will address this truth and its consequences still impacting us today.

⁴ David M. Rabban, Academic Freedom: From Professional Norm to First Amendment Right (Harvard University Press, 2024).

⁵ Report of a Special Committee: Political Interference and Academic Freedom in Florida’s Public Higher Education System (AAUP 2023). https://www.aaup.org/file/AAUP_Florida_final.pdf

⁶ John R. Vile, First Amendment Rights of Colleges and Universities (Free Speech Center 2025).

⁷ Read more about AAG’s Advocacy and Policy work: https://www.aag.org/advocacy/.

⁸ David N. Livingstone, The Geographical Tradition: Episodes in the History of a Contested Enterprise (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992).

Please note: The ideas expressed by Executive Director Gary Langham are not necessarily the views of the AAG as a whole. Please feel free to email him at glangham [at] aag [dot] org.

Just a month ago, I was watching geographers from 80 countries connect and move from session to session at the Annual Meeting in Detroit. The natural light that flooded into the Huntington Place convention center made the space feel inviting while allowing a good view of the Detroit River. You may have seen people fishing outside as the walleye run was peaking. The river also marks the border with Canada, counterintuitively south of the center, reminding us of the moment’s politics. Yet, despite the politics of the moment, geographers from more than 80 countries chatted and greeted each other, reminding us of the restorative power of being together as a community.

It had been 40 years since AAG was last in Detroit, a city synonymous with grassroots activism and geographic innovation. This year’s theme, Making Spaces of Possibility, underscored our commitment to equity, climate justice, and amplifying marginalized voices. These themes were on display everywhere you looked and in every meeting room. More than 5,600 of us gathered in over 1,000 sessions during the week. Concerns over border crossing led to the rapid conversion of nearly 160 sessions to hybrid. Our ability to quickly switch formats builds on our investments in climate-friendly meeting options. And, while we didn’t imagine the current strains on international travel, I am proud of our fantastic staff and the systems that helped us meet the moment.

The meeting also honored Detroit’s legacy as the birthplace of the Detroit Geographical Expedition and Institute (DGEI), a pioneering initiative in community-driven mapping and racial justice. Sessions with Gwendolyn Warren, Katherine McKittrick, and Joe Darden were highlights for me. I hope you watched the video series preparing us for Detroit, too. Thinking of Detroit’s history through activism, migration, and food enriches the overall experience.

On My Mind: Challenges and Opportunities 

International Members

As geopolitical tensions rise, we reaffirm our commitment to fostering a global geographic community. International voices are vital to our discipline’s growth. The recent attacks on scholars with student visas, often for trivial legal infractions, illustrate the intent to undermine these community members who are vital to geography and academia in the United States (see our recent joint statement). I’ll talk more in future columns about balancing the need to advocate for geographers while ensuring we don’t increase their risks and challenges. These are imperfect trade-offs, but we always try to err on the side of not harming members.

Federal Funding for Science

Recent federal actions have frozen grants and dismantled diversity programs, jeopardizing research and careers. Since legal avenues will likely be our most successful approach in the near term, AAG looks to coalitions to help us resist and overcome these challenges. We recently partnered with AFGE, the federal employee union, to help them fight layoffs at NSF. Many of you shared stories about how cuts impacted you, your research, and your departments. We can use these testimonies to make the impacts of reductions real to policymakers and judges.

Our students take many jobs over the summer through federal agencies and working on research funded by agencies like NSF and NOAA. These students are our future land stewards. When we ask employers (in the private and public sectors) about what makes a great land manager from our university, they invariably emphasize the importance of real-world field jobs. The disappearance of these jobs is not just a loss to federal agencies and the many rural communities where the jobs are situated. It is a loss to our future workforce and our natural resources.

—AAG member response to federal cuts

We also join in statements issued by coalitions (for example, ACLS, Union of Concerned Scientists, AAUP, etc.). Scientists are being encouraged to share the stories of what NSF funding makes possible, and what is at stake, with the hashtag #WithoutNSF. Share your stories on social media and tag AAG so we can follow and amplify.

While collective advocacy will be critical, we also need individual action. Calling or visiting your elected representatives effectively ensures they know how their constituents feel. For some members, this is a familiar approach; for others, it’s new. We will bring opportunities and training to members in the future. We also have a new tool that alerts us to challenges to academic freedom in states. We can then alert members in those states to take local action. During the meeting, for example, we sent out an alert about SB1 in Ohio, which did pass as expected, but was under more scrutiny due to alerts such as ours.

Academic Freedom

The ability of academics to teach and conduct research free of political interference is critical to a functioning society. These principles are fundamental to AAG and yet are under threat in ways we never imagined. Not since the “red scare” of the 1960s have we seen direct threats to these freedoms. The emergence of modern academia since the Civil War and the core statements of academic freedom in 1915 and 1940 remind us of how recent and fragile these bedrock principles are.

Academic freedom can serve the public good only if universities as institutions are free from outside pressures in the realm of their academic mission and individual faculty members are free to pursue their research and teaching subject only to the academic judgment of their peers.

 —AAUP, Statement of Principles of Academic Freedom and Tenure, 1940

Academic societies like AAG embody these principles primarily by publishing peer-reviewed articles and hosting conferences. Within the scope of each journal, submissions get peer-reviewed and edited by subject-matter experts but are otherwise wide ranging in content and breadth. Within professional standards and ethics, anyone can present on any topic at our meetings. This neutrality is central to academic freedom: AAG does not judge which ideas are right or wrong but provides a safe space to debate and explore ideas. This open-ended format is intended to maximize access to ideas, and it embraces openness toward who can present them. Encountering ideas or conclusions one disagrees with is a feature and not a bug. It’s this format which makes sessions exciting and enriching. However, it’s also why professional codes of conduct and boundaries are essential. For example, no one has the right to interrupt a speaker, regardless of one’s thoughts on the content. With no rules, these discussions can move from invigorating to oppressive. Recent threats to academic freedom remind us why these spaces to discuss ideas are vital, and why AAG must stand up to those who seek to silence our voices and rights to open discussion.

Looking Ahead to San Francisco 2026

Last week, I visited San Francisco to begin planning for our next annual meeting from March 17-21, 2026. We always listen closely to feedback about meetings and seek to improve each time. Indeed, Detroit had higher satisfaction scores than recent meetings. We know that affordability is a big concern, especially for students. I am pleased to report that we are working with additional hotels to offer great rooms, near the venue, at great rates. The hostel I toured this week was vibrant, fun and affordable. Just another example of our commitment to bringing the best experiences to our members, available to all.

Registration will open this summer, and I hope you are thinking of session ideas. Let’s continue building spaces of possibility together.

Please note: The ideas expressed by Executive Director Gary Langham are not necessarily the views of the AAG as a whole. Please feel free to email him at glangham [at] aag [dot] org.