Let Geography Die Chasing Derwent’s Ghost at Harvard

An investigative history of the closure of Harvard University’s geography program in the mid-twentieth century due to homophobia and wider institutional politics.


Let Geography Die tells the little-known and oft-misunderstood story of geographical research and education at Harvard University. In investigative fashion, Alison Mountz and Kira Williams unearth the personal and institutional secrets that drove the sudden closure of Harvard’s geography program at the precise moment that it reached its apex. At the heart of this narrative are the hidden personal lives of the queer men recruited to build the geography program—the same ones who were later blamed for its demise. Chief among these figures is Derwent Whittlesey, who eventually became Harvard’s last lone geography professor, once the program he had so successfully built was closed around him. 

The book weaves together several histories at once: the enactment of homophobic policies under McCarthyism designed to purge queer people from university campuses and government offices; a university President with little regard for the social sciences on a personal mission to dissolve geographic education; fierce, if failed, university politicking to rescue and then resuscitate the program; personal queer lives hidden in plain sight on the edge of campus; and two contemporary queer political geographers on a mission to memorialize the queer people blamed for society’s ills. 

Let Geography Die exposes the truth behind this important story—as well as its wider haunting of an entire discipline 75 years later—while also restoring the humanity of the central characters involved, especially Derwent Whittlesey.

Alison Mountz is Professor of Geography and Acting Vice-Principal of Research & Innovation at the University of Toronto Scarborough. She is the author or coauthor of award-winning books, including Seeking Asylum, Boats, Borders, and Bases, and The Death of Asylum. 

Kira Williams is a political geographer and a data scientist at University of Toronto Scarborough. Her research focuses on international migration, borders, political geography, analytical methodology, and statistics. She has published over 20 peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and an edited volume.