We, the undersigned, active members of the American Association of Geographers, write to you as our elected representatives in the AAG’s governing body to urge you to pass a motion in council putting the boycott of Israeli academic institutions complicit in genocide, occupation, and apartheid to a vote of the full membership. Such a member vote would aim to bring the AAG into compliance with the guidelines of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.
In 2025, after just seven days of petitioning at the annual conference in Detroit, over a thousand AAG members signed a petition for a special meeting to discuss the AAG’s adoption of divestment and boycott measures. This campaign was fueled by the outrage of geographers around the world witnessing the horrific genocidal Israeli violence against Palestinians unfold in real time. This outrage was firmly rooted in a set of principles including the AAG’s Statement of Professional Ethics and in our commitments to geography colleagues in Palestinian universities and research centres; to our moral compasses; and to our legal obligations under international law.
In the fall of 2025, hundreds of AAG members engaged in a deliberative process and together successfully secured the divestment of AAG’s funds from firms like Palantir Technologies and Raytheon, successfully bringing our organization into compliance with the Divestment demands of BDS.
We celebrate this important step, and are now writing to demand the petition's remaining original call, which included the boycott of Israeli academic institutions. This decision should be taken democratically–not by staff-written reports–but through a membership vote that past AAG President William Moseley acknowledged our bylaws do indeed allow for if expressly called for by our elected council.
Since AAG divested its funds, a farcical “ceasefire” was put into place in Gaza, during which over 1000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli armed forces. Meanwhile, Israeli settlers continue to terrorize and kill Palestinians in the West Bank, disrupting all aspects of life. Higher education institutions are particularly impacted, as their campuses are regularly invaded and their students shot by the Israeli military, severely disrupting academic life. Furthermore, as of July 2026, Israel has killed over 4,300 people in Lebanon and injured more than 12,000 people. In the midst of ongoing and expanding Israeli state violence, the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction (BDS) campaign remains a crucial way for geographers to take non-violent international action and stand in solidarity with those who have been killed and with those who continue to live under Israeli siege.
The academic boycott is an act of material solidarity. It is also an invitation into a dialogue about the complicity and active role Israeli universities have and continue to play in Palestinian oppression. The academic boycott of Israeli institutions is not a boycott of individuals. It does not deny the academic freedoms of individual scholars. It is a boycott against the institutions and their formal representatives. It is therefore also an invitation to Israeli colleagues, and to geographers everywhere, to take active steps to stand for justice by refusing to remain complicit in genocide, apartheid, displacement, and settler colonialism.
The most democratic way forward to adjudicate the question of academic boycott is through a membership-wide vote. It’s not only within the culture of our organization, it is also the norm across our sister-disciplinary associations. The American Anthropological Association, the American Studies Association, the Middle East Studies Association and more all allowed for membership votes on this important issue. Those professional academic associations that have prevented a member vote on this matter, such as the American Sociological Association, are now facing a widespread boycott from a disgruntled membership who rightly view this decision as fundamentally anti-democratic.
At a time of rising authoritarianism and democratic backsliding across the United States, we therefore urge you to practice member democracy by trusting the intelligence of your fellow geographers who elected you to adjudicate this issue through a democratic vote.
We urge you to pass a motion in one of the 2026 council meetings that would allow for a general membership vote before the 2027 AAG annual meeting in New York on a boycott of Israeli academic institutions complicit in genocide and apartheid.