This paper examines the silence of critical and radical geographers during the Trump administration's 2025 federal occupations of Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., Despite decades of theoretical development around urban sovereignty and spatial resistance, scholars remained largely absent from public discourse during unprecedented military interventions. Analysis of academic responses reveals California universities dominated engagement while Northeastern institutions stayed silent, and legal scholars far outnumbered geographers in commentary. Google search data demonstrates immigration enforcement commanded minimal public attention despite record operations, averaging just 2.6% of national searches while competing issues maintained sharp advantages. This reflects broader academic marginalization of immigrant movements, where immigration activism ranks seventh in citations despite sustained effectiveness. We argue structural path dependencies, rather than moral failings, explain this disciplinary withdrawal. The paper calls for immediate deployment of critical geographic tools including counter-mapping federal occupation patterns and spatial analysis for community defense networks.
Nicholls et al. (Tue,) studied this question.