“They didn’t really belong anymore in an academic setting,” said Andrew T. Weil ’63, a Crimson reporter who followed the story closely.
Leary left Harvard shortly after the March 1962 faculty meeting, when University administrators decided not to renew his contract because he did not appear for his lectures. Later, he would say that he was fired by Pusey.
“At that point, [Leary] didn’t much care,” Cohen said. “He was pretty involved in the psychedelic movement.”
Leary rose to national prominence in the 1960s counterculture movement due to his experience and support of psychedelic drug use, defending his use of drugs before the Supreme Court, popularizing the phrase “turn on, tune in, drop out,” and even collaborating with The Beatles.
“[Leary] was a cultural icon. His influence was enormous,” Lattin said. “He was certainly a man on a crusade.”
“He saw himself as a prophet,” Lattin added. “He saw himself as a messiah.”
On the other hand, Dass left Harvard in 1963, news of which was displayed on the front page of The New York Times. He continued psychedelic research until 1967, when he left for an inspiring trip to India that led him to a path of eastern philosophy and spirituality and to his eventual name change. According to Weil, this front-page appearance may have marked “one of the first times people in the country heard about LSD.”
He said the experiment contributed to bringing hallucinogenic drugs into the national consciousness.
Yet while their investigation magnified public awareness and use of hallucinogenic drugs, the controversial experiments also stunted future scientific research into psychedelic medicine.
“Leary’s last legacy was that he set back periods of research,” Lattin said. “He launched such a crusade that science suffered.”
Within a few years, research with and use of hallucinogenic drugs such as psilocybin and LSD became illegal.
“It pushed people’s buttons and made it hard for people to research these drugs,” said Weil.
The resistance lasted into the 1990s, but recent years have seen a resurgence of research in these areas.
“It’s taken years for people to be looking at the positive effects of drugs again,” said Weil.
Fifty years removed from the controversy, Cohen said that he believes his chance encounter with Dass was ultimately beneficial.
“Almost all of us would say yes, that was a...set of experiments that changed our lives, and maybe for the better,” Cohen said.
Cohen, who now holds a Ph.D in clinical psychology, specializes in substance abuse prevention research and practice. Co-founder of the Pacific Institute for Research & Evaluation, one of the nation’s largest nonprofit research institutes on drug abuse prevention, Cohen noted that although the experiments did indeed influence his career path, they did so “ironically in the opposite direction.”
“You get high, but you always come down,” he said.
—Staff writer Nikita Kansra can be reached at nkansra01@college.harvard.edu.
—Staff writer Cynthia W. Shih can be reached at cshih@college.harvard.edu.