How to Change Your Mind

Alpert, he was indignant. He went to his editor at the Crimson and
proposed an investigation.
Weil developed leads on a handful of fellow students whom Alpert had
turned on in violation of university rules. (Weil would later write that
“students and others were using hallucinogens for seductions both
heterosexual and homosexual.”) But there were two problems with his
scoop: none of the students to whom Alpert supposedly gave drugs were
willing to say so on the record, and the Crimson’s lawyers were worried
about printing defamatory charges against professors. The lawyers
advised Weil to turn over his information to the administration. He could
then write a story reporting on whatever actions the university took in
response to the charges, thereby reducing the newspaper’s legal exposure.
But Weil still needed a student to come forward.
He traveled to New York City to meet with the prominent father of one
of them—Ronnie Winston—and offered him a deal. As Alpert tells the
story,* “He went to Harry Winston”—the famous Fifth Avenue jeweler
—“and he said, ‘Your son is getting drugs from a faculty member. If your
son will admit to that charge, we’ll cut out your son’s name. We won’t use
it in the article.’” So young Ronnie went to the dean and, when asked if he
had taken drugs from Dr. Alpert, confessed, adding an unexpected fillip:
“Yes, sir, I did. And it was the most educational experience I’ve had at
Harvard.”
Alpert and Leary appear to be the only Harvard professors fired in the
twentieth century. (Technically, Leary wasn’t fired, but Harvard stopped
paying him several months before his contract ended.) The story became
national news, introducing millions of Americans to the controversy
surrounding these exotic new drugs. It also earned Andrew Weil a plum
assignment from Look magazine to write about the controversy, which
spread the story still further. Describing the psychedelic scene at Harvard
in the third person, Weil alluded to “an undergraduate group . . .
conducting covert research with mescaline,” neglecting to mention he was
a founding member of that group.
This was not, suffice it to say, Andrew Weil’s proudest moment, and
when I spoke to him about it recently, he confessed that he’s felt badly
about the episode ever since and had sought to make amends to both
Leary and Ram Dass. (Two years after his departure from Harvard, Alpert
embarked on a spiritual journey to India and returned as Ram Dass.)