[Linganth] Virtual option for AAA 2025?

Tue Mar 18 15:59:02 UTC 2025

Thank you, Andrew.
In the meantime, I have read these emails carefully, understand the concerns about the AAA 2025 meeting format, and will be sure to share them in detail at the Section Assembly tomorrow.
As for the SLA conference this May, for reasons previously outlined, we are not able to officially offer a hybrid format.  However, this does not prohibit registrants who are participants on panels from making hybrid arrangements on their own—for instance, reading a colleagues' paper who is not present or zooming them in—as long as they are not depending on technical support to do so.  We also encourage registrants who are presenting posters, and who are unable to travel, to contact us at help at 2025slaconference.org<mailto:help at 2025slaconference.org>.  We will troubleshoot the best we can.  Finally, a reminder of our newly launched SLA Online, led by Andrew Graan and Rafadi Hakim, which is designed to offer chances to gather virtually throughout the course of the year in acknowledgement that, given an ever-shifting state of affairs, many of us are unable to gather in person at any one point in time.  So, in the coming months and years, we can all look forward to more virtual programming such as the very well attended What Does Free Speech Discourse Do? An SLA Online Discussion, held in late January.
All best,
Summerson

From: Linganth <linganth-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of Carruthers, Andrew M. <acarru at sas.upenn.edu>
Sent: Sunday, March 16, 2025 1:56 PM
To: Kathryn Woolard <kwoolard at ucsd.edu>
Cc: linganth at listserv.linguistlist.org <linganth at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Subject: Re: [Linganth] Virtual option for AAA 2025?

Thank you, all, for voicing these important concerns. This week I will liaise with the Meetings Coordinator for the 2025 AAA, Amaris Morningstar, to discuss possibilities for virtual programming.

all best and more anon,

Andrew M Carruthers
Assistant Professor
Department of Anthropology
University of Pennsylvania
SLA Program Chair

On Mar 16, 2025, at 2:01 PM, Woolard, Kathryn <kwoolard at ucsd.edu> wrote:

 I second Richard’s request that SLA call for the AAA 2025 meetings to be in hybrid format.

Kathryn Woolard, Professor Emerita
Dept. of Anthropology UCSD

On Mar 16, 2025, at 10:28, Richard J Senghas <senghas at sonoma.edu> wrote:

 [Apologies and warning about the length of this response; this topic triggered expressions of concerns I’ve been stewing on for some time now.  —RJS]

Colleagues,

I strongly believe that asking for reconsideration of this in-person only decision for AAA 2025 is warranted for multiple reasons of accessibility and safety (age, economic, political, among others).  I would like to see the SLA and other units or interest groups (within and extremely to the AAA) formally call for a hybrid format as a matter of equity and efficacy to further the fundamental purposes of our Annual Meetings: the dissemination of research; peer review and collaboration; and democratic self-governance as professional disciplinary organizations.

Increasingly, DACA and undocumented individuals (or those who might be deemed to simply “look like unauthorized individuals”) are at greater risk even for domestic travel, especially with differing levels of compliance or capitulation by authorities in the various states, counties, and municipalities.

Many of our legally-resident members are non-USA citizens with either visas or even Green Cards that are demonstrably no longer being respected.  Those international scholars with no reasonable reason for refusal of admittance at our borders can no longer be confident that they will be admitted.  And, alas, it appears that the US Legislative Branch is capitulating to the whims and directives of the Executive Branch, exacerbating (if not fueling) the concerns and risks considerably.

Many of our areas of research are active foci for federal targeting, not just for their funding or publishing of findings, but also for agencies, organizations, or individuals who are openly being labeled as “The Enemy Within” because their public positions critique or are even in opposition to official stances and pronouncements.  Sadly, topics or projects that are actually unrelated to these problematically-identified areas that just happen to use certain identified terms or phrases deemed anathema could cause many others that apparently aren’t intentionally targeted to be swept into the maw of this indiscriminate (though very discriminating) movement despite whatever context or coreferences would indicate “non-problematic” cases (for example, the scrubbing of the historical references on federal websites to the atomic-bomb delivering airplane “Enola Gay”).

I believe that concerns about environmental mitigation from reduced greenhouse gas emissions due to fewer long-distance travelers need only a mention, as they are almost self-evident nowadays.

Excluding so many of our members and colleagues from participating in professional advancement and professional self-governance by an in-person only policy seems extremely counter-productive.  Yes, there are many both tangible and intangible benefits of participating in-person, but I do not believe that those should be promoted at the expense of so many other benefits and principles.  The both-and solution of a hybrid format for the Annual Meetings of the AAA seems to me, while especially appropriate for this year, to be warranted for all future meetings.

—RJS
===========================
Richard J. Senghas, Ph.D.
Professor, Anthropology/Human Development
School of Applied Human and Environmental Studies
SSU Statewide Senator, Academic Senate, California State University VP
Stevenson Hall 3804
Sonoma State University
1801 East Cotati Avenue
Rohnert Park, CA 94928-3609
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On Mar 16, 2025, at 8:17 AM, Zentella, Ana <azentella at ucsd.edu> wrote:

In total agreement,  esp since it is harder for me to travel every yr.
 Ac Zentella

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________________________________
From: Linganth <linganth-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of Joseph Wilson <joseph.wilson at utoronto.ca>
Sent: Sunday, March 16, 2025 7:07:31 AM
To: linganth at listserv.linguistlist.org <linganth at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Subject: [Linganth] Virtual option for AAA 2025?

Hi all,

I just posted a comment on the All Members Community channel of the AAA message board about AAA 2025:

[snip]

As I understand it, the AAA conference this year will no longer have a virtual option. I'm not an American citizen and am not comfortable travelling to the US at the moment with the rhetoric about Canada coming from the current administration. There are probably other non-American members who feel the same way. I'm not sure what percentage of the AAA membership is non-American, but if the only option for AAA 2025 is in-person, there are going to be a lot of people who are not willing/able to make the trip. In the end, this will have a more detrimental effect on the "participation levels and overall engagement" than would holding a hybrid conference. Would you reconsider this policy?

[snip]

If others feel the same way, perhaps the SLA could consider asking AAA to reconsider their in-person-only policy for 2025?

I’ve touched base with Bernard Perley, too, to see if CASCA can advocate for this option.

Thx

Joe

Joseph.wilson at utoronto.ca<mailto:%0bJoseph.wilson at utoronto.ca>

PhD Candidate,

Dept. of Anthropology, University of Toronto

Schwartz Reisman Institute Graduate Fellow

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