GEOG4PAL

News and updates

Come to our GJP BDS conversation series

August 28, 2025

We are writing this message as an update and a call for action on our campaign to pass academic boycott and divestment resolutions at the American Association of Geographers (AAG). Keep an eye out for emails about once a week with updates on the situation in Palestine, updates on our campaign, and actions you can take to support our efforts towards BDS at the AAG.

After more than 22 months of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Israel continues to act with impunity, bombing tents, shooting people at aid sites, and enacting a policy of forced starvation in Gaza. Israel’s recent bombing of the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis killed more than 20 people, including 5 journalists. The AAG has so far refused to commit to an academic boycott or divestment from Israeli (and other military) investments. For these reasons, and many more, our organizing remains a vital effort to express meaningful and material solidarity with Palestine.

To support our campaign, we are planning a fall conversation series, beginning with an event that brings together key participants in disciplinary academic boycott and divestment campaigns.

EVENT INVITATION

Join us on September 9th, 12pm EST for the first event of our fall conversation series titled: BDS Across the Academy. The event will bring together comrades who have worked on BDS campaigns from the American Anthropological Association (AAA), American Sociological Association (ASA), and a representative from our campaign to discuss strategies and tactics for successful BDS campaigns in the academy. This will be an opportunity to hear GJP campaign updates in more detail and to learn from other academic BDS campaigns about strategies to enforce democratic governance of our academic associations. Please register at this link.

CALL TO ACTION

As part of increasing pressure on the AAG, particularly in response to their recent decision to undermine democratic process (read last week’s email here for more info), we are asking members to delay registering for the upcoming AAG meeting in San Francisco. Membership and registration are our key leverage points in pressuring the AAG, and we want to emphasize that to AAG leadership in the weeks before the special meeting on October 3rd. We know the AAG is currently offering reduced early-bird rates, but if you are financially able to hold off until after the October 3rd meeting, it would make a real difference to our collective effort! Please consider postponing your decision to register for the conference, and encouraging friends and colleagues to do the same!

Finally, don’t forget to attend the special meeting on October 3rd, from 12:00 to 1:30 pm EST to demand a vote on BDS resolutions at the AAG as proposed by GJP.

Thank you for being an active part in the success of our campaign! With the Trump Administration’s attacks on higher education, it is important we do not back down and maintain our position and commitment to this rightful cause.

An AAG special meeting on BDS

August 21, 2025

Greetings from the Geographers for Justice in Palestine team. We’ve been busy organizing our campaign for the passage of BDS resolutions by the American Association of Geographers after successfully gathering a petition with over 10% of the membership of AAG! Nonetheless, while Israel’s horrific and genocidal assault on and starvation of Gaza continues unabated, our disciplinary leaders are delaying and obfuscating the clear action we need to take as geographers. If your AAG membership is active, you should have received an email from AAG executive director, Gary Langham, announcing a “special meeting” on October 3, 2025 at 9 AM PT/12 PM ET. We are writing to provide context surrounding this email, our analysis of AAG’s handling of our petition, and a crucial ask to forward this email so that our campaign can reach the broadest audience.

Our organizing blitz at AAG 2025 in Detroit was hugely successful. We organized a pre-conference attended by 200 people and a series of packed sessions on the role of Geography in the Palestine solidarity movement. Over 10% of our membership signed the petition to the executive council to convene a meeting about our proposed BDS resolutions. This unprecedented solidarity with Palestine and Palestinian geographers is crucial to uphold, now more than ever before.

While we had hoped AAG Executive Director and Council would support our BDS proposals as member-driven change in our organization, they instead have chosen an undemocratic and unprecedented path forward which locks AAG members out of meaningful participation while reserving the ability to develop their own “report” on BDS. This process will interface with members only through what seems to be a “listening session” model. Despite initial assurances from Gary Langham, the process you all asked AAG to take by signing the petition is not being considered. We have been told directly that “No further action is needed from [GJP’s organizers] or any petitioner” in this process. We believe the executive council has likely violated aspects of AAG’s bylaws and standing rules in the process. Further, these decisions were made by the outgoing executive board on June 25; the minutes will not be visible to AAG members until September. These calculated moves are signs that the executive council would be extremely unlikely to ever allow any membership-wide vote on BDS resolutions or any meaningful action–unless we heighten our pressure.

We are committed to organizing over the next six weeks to resist this undemocratic process and make the special meeting a site of antagonism for AAG council and a campaign win for us. Here’s what we are asking of you to ensure that the demands of the petition you signed at AAG are respected:

  1. We need members to attend the special meeting and demand to vote on actual BDS resolutions as proposed by GJP. The special meeting is currently scheduled for October 3rd, from 12:00 to 1:30 pm EST.
  2. We need you to forward this email to colleagues and ask them to sign up here to continue recieiving emails. Please use a more secure non-institutional email address, as many university spam filters automatically catch our emails. We will be messaging this list regularly with updates and steps you can take over the next six weeks. We need to mobilize a skilled and disciplined message about how to approach this meeting, and executive council, in our specialty group communities, and on our geography listserves. We have assembled a series of talking points on our website, including background on the BDS movement, why AAG in particular should support it, and how to address potential concerns. Now is the time to practice making the case for the urgency of boycott and divestment in AAG as we await details on the form of the special meeting. Keep an eye out for more opportunities to practice between now and October 3.
  3. We need you to further spread our message on social media. You can follow our accounts @geogboycott for message discipline and graphics, but the most effective messages are those that are spoken from your own position.

We’ll keep you up to date on small asks over the next few weeks. Stay tuned for a Zoom teach-in in September featuring colleagues in disciplinary organizations that have passed BDS motions. And if our representatives continue to drag their feet, we need to strategize how to escalate further, such as taking more drastic action prior to the San Francisco AAG meeting.

This is a critical moment for reforming AAG to leverage our power and knowledge courageously. Choosing neutrality on Palestine today will be choosing powerlessness on migration, academic freedom, climate change, and fascism tomorrow. With Palestine in our hearts, our goal is to change the culture of silence and neutrality within our discipline. Now is the time to act as Palestinian geographers and civil society have called us to do.