Crossing Borders to Address Attendee Safety Concerns -

Mission-driven North American organizations are evaluating reputational — and attendee safety — risks as well as revenue implications as they plan where to hold their upcoming events in a geopolitically charged environment.

Amid escalating political volatility in the U.S., two academic associations have taken the unusual step of moving their planned meetings from the U.S. to Canada. The Work and Family Researchers Network (WFRN) opted to pull its June 2026 conference from Boston to Montréal, while the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport (NASSS) will split its annual conference between Seattle and Vancouver on Nov. 6-8, 2025, and also offer an online option. These site-selection maneuvers signal how mission-driven North American organizations are evaluating reputational — and attendee safety — risks as well as revenue implications as they plan where to hold their upcoming events in a geopolitically charged environment.

Member safety was a key driver of WFRN’s decision to move its 2026 biannual meeting to Canada, but so was academic freedom. “We convened a group of scholars immediately after receiving a concerned email from a member,” Jennifer Hook, president of WFRN, told Convene. “In addition to risks associated with travel” — around two out of five WFRN members reside outside the U.S. — “members were also concerned about their ability to engage in free exchange of perspectives,” she said. The organization’s stated mission is to accelerate interactions between academics, researchers, policymakers, and workplace practitioners to promote a greater depth of understanding around work and family issues. With those dual concerns in mind, the organization decided to survey members about their preferences for a host destination. “We went from ‘Hmm, this might be a problem,’ to a board vote in the span of two weeks,” Hook said.

After weighing attendee feedback and conducting internal discussions throughout April, WFRN contracted to hold its meeting at Concordia University in Montréal, June 17-20, 2026. The $36,500 deposit paid to the Boston venue that had been under contract to host the event was the only financial consequence. “We are very thankful to Business Events Montréal, which provided incentives that will help us recoup a portion of this loss,” Hook said. WFRN’s 2024 conference was also held in Montréal. “Compared to COVID,” she added, “this was a relatively easy fix.” So far, members seem content to meet in Canada rather than in the U.S. “We have not received any negative feedback but are aware that some scholars may be unable to travel to Montréal due to visa issues,” she said. “We are working on ways to include these members in online and future events.” The WFRN board also voted to keep Montréal as the host destination for the following biennial meeting. Hook said that “the factors were similar, although there is greater uncertainty projecting out to 2028. I think U.S. locations are in the running for 2030.”

Splitting the Difference

For NASSS, the complexity of the current sociopolitical climate and the U.S. President’s January 2025 executive order recognizing a traveler’s biological sex over gender identity prompted an unusual compromise: co-locating its November 2025 conference in both the U.S. and Canada and adding a virtual attendance option. “The first thing that we looked into was whether or not we could get Seattle to accept cancellation,” Travers, president-elect of NASSS and a professor at Simon Fraser University, told Convene. “At the same time, I was coming to understand that having the location solely in Canada wasn’t going to provide a solution. There was a critical trans scholar from the States who’s been to Canada many times who was coming. He canceled because he was afraid of what was going to happen when he tried to go back. We were aware that a lot of Canadians weren’t going to want to travel to the United States because Trump was threatening to annex Canada and whatnot, but it was really more that some of us are trans, some of us are racialized, and some of us are just not willing to travel when others aren’t.”

Like WFRN, the NASSS board decided to quickly poll potential attendees to assess hopes and fears around its upcoming meeting. “We sent out a survey to our membership and we got over 300 responses. People were divided into thirds: about 100 said they’d go to Seattle, about 100 said they’d go to Vancouver, and about 100 said they’d attend virtually,” Travers said. “We found out that it would have cost us $71,000 to cancel the Seattle contract. The combination of having the Seattle hotel say, ‘No, we’re not going to let you out of the contract,’ and the awareness that people in the U.S. who aren’t citizens would be at risk if they attempted to leave the country helped us make the decision.”

NASSS, which fosters the sociological study of play, games, sports, and contemporary physical culture, and held its last three annual conferences in U.S. cities, is leaning into its 2025 meeting theme — “Sport, Justice and Belonging: Critical Analysis and Worldmaking” — with content focused on expanding the boundaries of what is possible. The unexpected shift to a hybrid, co-located meeting format has inspired a new opportunity for cross-site collaboration. “One of the things we’re going to do is there’ll be a room in Vancouver and a room in Seattle that we’re going to call ‘the fishbowl,’ which will be Vancouver and Seattle attendees interacting together online,” Travers said.

The cross-border format also has encouraged some NASSS members to attend the Canadian event when they had initially planned to avoid traveling to the U.S., bolstering the organization’s decision to split its 2025 meeting between the two countries. “It could have been really negative for the organization if we had failed to respond appropriately or if we’d taken a really long time,” Travers said. “We’ve gotten nothing but positive feedback. Not one person has been critical of our decision-making, which is really unusual. People like to complain, but I think everybody just gets it.”

Kate Mulcrone is Convene’s managing digital editor.