Speaker
Bretton Fosbrook
Title
Willis Harman, the Psychedelic Experience and 1960s U.S. Educational Policy Research
Abstract
In 1967, systems engineer Willis Harman left his post as a professor of engineering at Stanford University. He joined Stanford Research Institute to direct the Education Policy Research Center, on a contract sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, to examine “alternative futures” for long-term education policy. During his tenure at Stanford, Harman also taught human potential movement courses and co-authored papers on the psychedelic experience and creativity with researchers at the International Foundation for Advanced Study. This talk examines the strange career of Willis Harman as he transitioned from engineering professor to psychedelics researcher to U.S. educational policy analyst. It demonstrates how Harman’s background in psychedelic research not only informed his educational policy research but was a key reason he was hired by the U.S. Department of Education to direct the short-lived research center. Harman believed the “mind-expanding” properties of psychedelic agents could help solve the complex problems facing the United States in the late 1960s through a changed understanding of the nature of reality.
Bio
Bretton is a PhD Candidate in the department of Science and Technology Studies at York University. His dissertation explores the development of corporate scenario planning, focusing on how mid-to-late-twentieth century business strategists reconfigured experimental and intuitive techniques from the human sciences as a way to think about possible futures. Bretton joins cultural histories of technology and innovation with scholarship engaging the politics of technoscience. He was awarded a Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship from SSHRC.