An Interview with AAG Executive Director Gary Langham (Part 1)
While the AAG membership elects some of its governance ( 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…
The Invisible and The Silent
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…
The Spatial Scale of ‘We’
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…
Making Data Meaningful Or Geography’s Contribution to Data Science
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…
Facing an Existential Crisis or COVID-19 and the Long Term Future of Geography
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…
Doing Geography in the Age of Coronavirus or How is Everybody Coping?
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…
Going Global or How Best to Recognize the Internationalization of the AAG; Plus – an Addendum to my Previous Column
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…
Beyond the Academic 1 Percent Or How to Create a More Inclusive and Equitable Academic Culture
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…
The Publishing Paradox or How the Publishing Model May be Broken
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…
Going Local or How the AAG Can Help Enhance its Regional Divisions
The region is one of geography’s main concepts and, true to these roots, regional divisions—mostly within the United States but many including Canadian provinces—developed as an intrinsic part of the American Association of Geographers. The Pacific Coast Division was formed in 1938 and the other regional divisions were established in the 1940s and 1950s. Preston…
Finding your Parachute or The PhD is Not Just for Academics
Graduate students are haunted by the specter of future job uncertainty. Many Master’s students wonder what they will do with their degree. For PhD students, the period between becoming ABD and completing the dissertation elicits a queasy feeling. What will the academic job market be like? Will I land a job in my specialization, will…
A Golden Opportunity for Geography or How Can We Harness the Growth in AP Human Geography?
I am from a generation when high school classes (at least in my urban public school) were not terribly challenging. This was through no fault of the teachers, who had to contend with a broad range of students and overcrowded classrooms, but it meant that many of us coasted through high school, only to be…