In the early Sixties, hallucinogenic drugs were not yet on the banned substances list. A pharmaceutical company in Switzerland was supplying the psilocybin for Timothy Leary at Harvard free of any legal constraints. In my first year in Cambridge, the subjects of his drug “experiments” were artists, writers and musicians he invited to campus. What changed the following year was the University’s...
“Timothy Leary was your advisor? No way!” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that, or a variation of it. It represented in the minds of others a complete summary of my five-and-a-half-year experience at Harvard in the 60s. Maybe I was complicit in that reductive summary of a complex love/hate relationship with that revered institution. I probably dropped that L-bomb into conversations...
Note: I’ve been called for jury duty many times but have never actually served. The closest I got was on a case that the Assistant District described as a robbery of clothing from a store. He delivered this explanation to a panel that had already been narrowed to a number close to required final dozen. “I have one more question that I will ask you to respond to with a show of hands. Would you...
Doctors and Teachers My friend Saul Weiner is one of the most interesting people I know. I’m just finishing his second book, called On Becoming a Healer. Although the book’s primary audience is young doctors at various stages of their training, I knew that what he had to say about medical training would interest me because we’ve had a number of conversations over the years about the parallels...
(Note: The end of this current school year marks a historic moment in our country’s educational history. The abrupt move to remote learning was a shock to our individual and collective systems. It’s not clear what follows, but I thought it was important to capture one small corner of that gigantic sea change before we move on. I’ve invited Kimberly Folkening, the teacher on whose classroom my...