Reading about a crime is always an adventure between fear, doubt, and entertainment sponsored by that cocktail of endorphins and adrenaline that these types of stories induce in our brains. But when you read about real crimes, you finish the book and a cloud of feelings falls over you as you realize that this story that entertained you for so many hours actually happened. The mystery, anxiety, and pain of all these characters are real, and similar cases continue to happen and continue to be covered up. Telling and knowing about these stories is necessary. Because of personal reasons that I might write about in the future, I am so grateful to Becky Cooper for this book.
A murder at Harvard
In “We Keep the Dead Close,” Becky Cooper takes us on a 50-year journey, 10 of which are her own life investigating the 1969 murder of archaeologist Jane Britton in her Harvard dorm. It is some excellent reporting and entertaining narrative, but more than the story of a crime and the search for the killer, Cooper also paints the misogynistic and corrupt reality of academia.
In the 1960s it was still very much a recent development that Radcliffe women could attend classes alongside Harvard men. This effort that attempted to removed certain barriers does not happen without raising tensions. Women in the same classroom? Women seeking permanent positions? Unthinkable. Cooper shares several stories and aspects of women’s life at Harvard in the late 1960s. At the time, Jane Britton was studying archaeology and joining excavations in Iran, hoping soon to write her doctoral dissertation. The night before one of her most important exams someone murdered Jane in her dorm.
In addition to Jane’s murder, which is the main thread of the book, more unfortunate cases come to light of women on field trips or on-campus who were murdered or who mysteriously disappeared. It is unfortunate that many women in science – myself included – steer away from fieldwork because of insecurity, fear, and experiences that should not be as common as they are. That these powerful institutions – and individuals – can easily keep so much secret and influence investigations is unnerving and stupidly ironic on so many levels.
50 years without knowing what happened. Why? Who prevented the investigations? Cooper does an excellent job in this book of summarizing and unraveling so many characters and stories until she finally, in 2018, got her hands on the files she was denied for years, including documents she thought were lost forever.
Whatever your feelings about the resolution of the murder case, the issue of sexism and power dynamics in academic institutions is as real today as it was in the 1960s. Cooper brings Jane Britton’s story not only as a case deserving of justice but also as a powerful reminder of the misogyny and oppression that still pervades Academia today.