As an undergraduate at Harvard (graduating cum laude in 1965), Stephen Ujlaki was one of the students who took part, on multiple occasions, in Timothy Leary's LSD/psilocybin work commonly known as the Harvard Psilocybin Project. That project — run by Leary and colleagues in the early-to-mid 1960s — became one of the era's most controversial intersections of academia, psychiatry, and the nascent counterculture. Ujlaki's involvement places him inside a notorious chapter of 1960s intellectual history: experimental drug sessions framed as psychological research, intense debate over ethics and methodology, and the widening public scandal that would follow Leary and his circle. For Ujlaki, these experiences were formative, feeding into a later career steeped in politically engaged documentary work and a comfort with boundary-pushing subject matter.
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AI concept artworkArchive Record · 1960s
From Harvard lecture halls to psychedelic labs: Ujlaki's participation in Timothy Leary's Psilocybin experiments
Stephen Ujlaki / 1960s
As an undergraduate at Harvard (graduating cum laude in 1965), Stephen Ujlaki was one of the students who took part, on multiple occasions, in Timothy Leary's LSD/psilocybin work commonly known as the Harvard Psilocybin Project. That project — run by Leary and colleagues in the early-to-mid 1960s — became one of the era's most controversial intersections of academia, psychiatry, and the nascent counterculture. Ujlaki's involvement places him inside a notorious chapter of 1960s intellectual history: experimental drug sessions framed as psychological research, intense debate over ethics and methodology, and the widening public scandal that would follow Leary and his circle. For Ujlaki, these experiences were formative, feeding into a later career steeped in politically engaged documentary work and a comfort with boundary-pushing subject matter.
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