Richard J. Peet, President

Richard (Dick) J. Peet started a new intellectual movement within the discipline of geography, a radical turn that came to be known as ‘radical geography.’ Radical geography re-calibrated the discipline towards issues of social relevance like poverty, inequality, critique of capitalist exploitation in the global north and south, critique of Euro-Anglo centric development and modernity, studies of uneven development, nature’s exploitation, politics of space and ecology. 

Dick founded two journals – Antipode in 1970 (that he edited until 1985) and Human Geography in 2008 (that he edited until 2019). He is the author/co-author/editor of several books including Unholy Trinity: The IMF, World Bank and WTO; Theories of Development: Arguments, Contentions, Alternatives; Modern Geographical Thought; Liberation Ecologies: Environment, Development, Social Movements; Global Political Ecology; India's New Economic Policy; and New Models in Geography. He has also authored numerous influential journal articles.

Dick believes that the value generated through academic labor/research should be returned to scholars. As the President of the Institute of Human Geography, he started a grants program that has returned funds to radical scholarship for more than a decade. Dick is a beloved teacher and mentor bringing his classes alive with an exuberance, kindness, honesty and radical zeal that make education meaningful.

Dick was a professor at the Graduate School of Geography at Clark University for more than 50 years. He received a B.Sc. (Economics) from the London School of Economics, an M.A. from the University of British Columbia and a Ph.D. (Geography) from the University of California, Berkeley.