Press Release: Introducing Petrie-Flom’s POPLAR and PULSE Affiliated Researchers on Psychedelics

The Petrie-Flom Center is excited to announce our affiliated researchers for the Project on Psychedelics Law and Regulation (POPLAR) and our new project, Psychedelic Use, Law, and Spiritual Experience (PULSE). Through research, writing, workshops, and other projects, POPLAR and PULSE affiliated researchers will provide expertise and a range of perspectives on . We look forward to learning from them and sharing their insights with our audiences.  

The Project on Psychedelics Law and Regulation (POPLAR) Affiliated Researchers 

• Neşe Devenot, Ph.D., (she/they) has been contributing to the interdisciplinary field of Psychedelic Studies since 2010. They completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Bioethics at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and received their PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Pennsylvania. Neşe’s scholarship explores the intersections between health humanities, psychedelic bioethics, neuroethics, and comparative literature. They were a 2015-16 Research Fellow at the New York Public Library’s Timothy Leary Papers and a Research Fellow with the New York University Psilocybin Cancer Anxiety Study, where they participated in the first qualitative study of participant experiences. Their psychedelic ethics research has appeared in the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, JAMA Psychiatry, the Journal of Psychedelic Studies, Frontiers in Psychology, and Anthropology of Consciousness. Neşe’s book project on the role of narrative and literary devices in psychedelic experience is under contract with Columbia University Press. They are affiliated with The Ohio State University’s Center for Psychedelic Drug Research and Education (CPDRE), the Intercollegiate Psychedelics Network (IPN), the Psychedelic Educators Network (PEN), and Psymposia. 

• Tahlia R. Harrison M.A., L.M.F.T., is a licensed marriage and family therapist, researcher, and bioethicist. Tahlia holds an MA in Bioethics and Science Policy from Duke University and an MA in Marriage, Couple, and Family Therapy from Lewis and Clark Graduate School whoseprogram centers culturally responsive, antiracist, systemically-oriented principles in their clinical training. Tahlia is committed to bringing forward these principles in all of her endeavors and believes it is an ethical responsibility to work towards changing systems causing harm to the people she is entrusted to support as a clinician and researcher. Tahlia continuing her research examining topics related to psychology, clinical and research ethics, psychedelics, culturally-responsive trauma-informed care, and health disparities through doctoral study at the University of Ottawa with Dr. Monnica Williams at her Laboratory for Culture and Mental Health Disparities. 

• Ifetayo Harvey is the Executive Director of the People of Color Psychedelic Collective (POCPC), which educates and builds community with people of color interested in psychedelics and ending the war on drugs. Ifetayo is a 2022 Soros Justice fellow building a coalition of organizations and workers in the psychedelic field who want to shape the future of psychedelics. Ifetayo’s experience growing up with her father in prison brought her to drug policy reform work in 2013 as an intern at the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) and then joined them full-time in 2016. In 2013, Ifetayo was the opening plenary speaker at the International Drug Policy Reform Conference in Denver, Colorado. Ifetayo comes from a family of seven children raised by her mother in Charleston, South Carolina. She has a Bachelor’s degree from Smith College in history and African studies, where the college awarded her Outstanding Student Leader of the Year in 2014. She currently lives in New York City. 

• Callie Hoffmann, J.D., is a drug policy movement lawyer, organizer, and advocate. She advises entrepreneurs and healthcare practitioners at the forefront of the highly regulated and rapidly evolving psychedelic and cannabis industries on matters of regulatory compliance, dispute resolution, dealmaking, risk mitigation and criminal defense. As an organizer and advocate, Callie is passionate about bringing together diverse coalitions to advance drug policy reforms rooted in compassion and community. Callie has helped organize policy summits to design model psychedelic regulatory frameworks, direct actions at the White House fighting for the release of cannabis prisoners, and lobby efforts advocating for federal cannabis legalization. Callie was named as “30 Women Under 30” to watch in the psychedelics industry in 2022 by Students for Sensible Drug Policy, and one of “100 grassroots psychedelic leaders you should know” by Hyphae Leaks in 2023. 

• Victoria Grace Litman M.Div., J.D., LL.M. is both a PULSE affiliated researcher and a Petrie-Flom Fellow in Psychedelic Law and Spirituality. She is a visiting professor at Roger Williams University School of Law, where she teaches Torts, Cannabis Law, and Psychedelics Law. She is also a Fellow in Psychedelic Law and Spirituality at Harvard Law School’s Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics. Her scholarly work focuses on the intersections of tax law, religious freedom, and emerging areas such as cannabis and psychedelics law. Litman’s research has garnered national attention, with multiple publications on the regulation of cannabis and psychedelics, particularly in relation to religious practices and public safety. She has published legal scholarship and commentary in the Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law, Penn’s Regulatory Review, Petrie-Flom Bill of Health, and the Cato Institute’s Regulation Magazine. 

• Robert Mikos, J.D., is one of the nation’s leading authorities on federalism, separation and powers, and drug law and policy. He has published, consulted, and lectured extensively on competing approaches to regulating drugs and the struggles among federal, state, and local officials for control of this quickly evolving policy domain. Mikos holds the LaRoche Family Chair in Law at Vanderbilt University Law School, where he teaches courses in federalism, constitutional law, and cannabis law and policy. Professor Mikos has also taught at the University of Michigan, the University of Notre Dame, and the University of California, Davis. He earned his A.B. cum laude from Princeton University and his J.D. summa cum laude from the University of Michigan. After graduation from law school, Mikos clerked for Chief Judge Michael Boudin of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. 

• Cat Packer M.A., J.D., is a leading expert on cannabis law and policy, dedicated to advancing equity in cannabis and broader drug policy reform. She currently serves as the Director of Drug Markets and Legal Regulation at the Drug Policy Alliance and is a Distinguished Cannabis Policy Practitioner in Residence at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law’s Drug Enforcement and Policy Center. Packer also serves as a contributing author for the Thomas Reuters Cannabis Law Deskbook and is a founding board member and Director of Policy for the Cannabis Regulators of Color Coalition. From 2017 to 2022, Packer served as the first Executive Director of the City of Los Angeles Department of Cannabis Regulation where she led efforts to advise and implement cannabis business licensing, regulation and equity programming in “one of the largest, most challenging cannabis markets in the world” — making her the first person of color in the nation to lead a medical and adult-use cannabis regulatory program. 

• William Leonard Pickard M.P.P., is a former research associate in neurobiology at Harvard Medical School, Harvard fellow in drug policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and Deputy Director of the Drug Policy Analysis Program at UCLA. His 1996 prediction of the fentanyl epidemic was published by RAND in The Future of Fentanyl and Other Synthetic Opioids. 

• Eduardo Schenberg, M.Sc., Ph.D., is a neuroscientist studying psychedelics from an interdisciplinary perspective. He has published papers on neuroimaging, clinical, epistemological and also ethical issues in psychedelic research, especially related to indigenous rights. He has lectured in different events and institutions in North and South America as well as Europe, where he currently resides. His work is currently focused on the serious limitations of evidence-based medicine as a guiding epistemological framework for psychedelic research, and how to use advancements in the philosophy of evidence in medicine, such EBM+ and evidential pluralism, to help advance the development of safe, effective, equitable and ethical evidence-based psychedelic therapies. 

Psychedelic Use, Law, and Spiritual Experience (PULSE) Affiliated Researchers 

• Swayam Bagaria, M.A., Ph.D., is a cultural and cognitive anthropologist at the Harvard Divinity School with research interests at the intersection of spirituality, consciousness studies, anthropology of health, and psychiatry. He is currently at work on several related projects including the idea of fuzzy beliefs to understand the dynamics of cross-generational cultural and religious transmission, an intellectual history of psychiatry in India, and developing anthropologically oriented R/S assessments for global mental health.  

• Jeffrey Breau, M.Div., is Program Lead for Psychedelics and Spirituality at Harvard’s Center for the Study of World Religions (CSWR). His research focuses on the formation, theologies, and ritual practices of novel psychedelic churches, and he is currently conducting a multiyear ethnography of these communities in the United States. Jeffrey also researches psychedelic chaplaincy. In that capacity he is a member of the ketamine chaplaincy advisory group at Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital, where he formerly provided ketamine integration counseling. Jeffrey co-founded the annual Psychedelic Intersections conference and the “Harvard’s Psychedelic History” walking tour. He organizes, among other programs, two series at the CSWR: Psychedelics and Ethics; and Psychedelics and Future of Religion.  

• Rev. Jaime Clark-Soles, Ph.D., M.Div., is Professor of New Testament and Founding Director of the Baptist House of Studies at Perkins School of Theology, SMU in Dallas, TX. She holds a Ph.D. in New Testament from Yale University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and a Master of Divinity from Yale Divinity School. She earned a B.A. in Philosophy (with a minor in Russian Studies) from Stetson University. Clark-Soles works at the intersection of psychedelics and religion, especially Christianity, serving as a bridge between the academy and church; the academy and the cultural public square; and the medical/scientific and the spiritual/religious. She is the author of numerous books, including Women in the Bible and Death and the Afterlife in the New Testament. Her current book project, Psychedelics and Soul Care: What Christians Need to Know, is under contract with Eerdmans. Her essay “Psychedelics, the Bible, and the Divine” was recently published in a special issue of Religions devoted to “Theology and Science: Loving Science, Discovering the Divine.” She is affiliated with the Transforming Chaplaincy Psychedelic Care Network (TCPCN) and the Psychedelic Educators Network (PEN), and is a Field Scholar for the Emory Center for Psychedelics and Spirituality (ECPS). She earned the Certificate in Psychedelic-Assisted Therapies and Research through CIIS. She speaks to a wide variety of audiences, which have included the American Academy of Religion; the Cleveland Clinic; the Parliament of the World’s Religions; counseling centers; theological schools in both the U.S. and Canada; churches of different denominations; and nonprofit groups. She is an ordained Baptist minister who has served in both congregational and hospice settings. 

• Paul Gillis-Smith, M. Div., is a program lead on psychedelics and spirituality, as part of the Transcendence and Transformation Initiative at the Center for the Study of World Religions. He is an alum of Harvard Divinity School (M.Div ’24), where he focused on the history of psychiatry as it relates to psychedelic medicine and chaplaincy. He has published on the philosophical underpinnings and genealogy of the primary psychometric tool for quantifying mystical experience in psychedelic research, the Mystical Experience Questionnaire (Breau and Gillis-Smith, 2023), and his thesis presented a historical triangulation between psychoanalysis, psychiatric chaplaincy, and critiques of psychiatry as they emerged from R.D. Laing, Gilles Deleuze, and Felix Guattari. Grounding his research in hands-on practice, Paul was also the inaugural student chaplain in the Office of Ministry Studies’s ketamine chaplaincy program at Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital. Paul co-produced the Harvard Psychedelic Walking Tour, co-facilitated the Center’s first reading group on psychedelics and religion, and he has co-organized the Center’s conference on psychedelics since 2023. 

• Pilar Hernandez-Wolfe, Ph.D., is a Professor at Lewis & Clark College. She is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and Professional Counselor, and approved clinical supervisor. She has taught, written, and conducted research in national and international contexts including her native Colombia and Mexico. She pioneered the concept of vicarious resilience in the context of torture survivor treatment and mental health services addressing politically based violence. She has authored numerous peer-reviewed articles and chapters on mental health and the training of clinicians. She is the author of “A Borderland’s View of Latinos, Latin Americans and Decolonization, Rethinking Mental Health”, and co-author of “La Resiliencia Vicaria en las Relaciones de Ayuda” published in Spanish by the Javeriana University in Colombia. Her current interests involve traumatic stress and resilience in the context of decolonization, eco-informed therapies and systems thinking, psychedelic-assisted therapies, and ethics. Pilar served in the training and equity subcommittees of the Oregon Psilocybin Services advisory board. 

• Rabbi Jay Michaelson, J.D., Ph.D., is a field scholar at the Emory Center for Psychedelics and Spirituality, and will be the Gruss Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School in Spring, 2025. He holds a Ph.D. in Jewish Thought from Hebrew University, a J.D. from Yale Law School, and nondenominational rabbinic ordination. Dr. Michaelson’s scholarly work focuses on mysticism, eros, and contemplative practice; his work on psychedelics includes the seminal 2008 article “Ayahuasca and Kabbalah,” participation in the first-ever Jewish Psychedelic Summit, and a recent Harvard Divinity School panel on “Are Psychedelics Theologically Significant for Judaism?” He is also the author of ten books, including God vs. Gay? The Religious Case for Equality; a Lambda Literary Award finalist; and The Heresy of Jacob Frank: From Jewish Messianism to Esoteric Myth, which won the 2023 National Jewish Book Award for scholarship. Outside the academy, Dr. Michaelson works as a journalist, teacher, and rabbi.  He is a frequent commentator on CNN and a contributor to Rolling Stone, The Forward, and other publications. Jay is a longtime teacher of meditation and spirituality, and is authorized to teach in a Theravadan Buddhist lineage. 

• John Rapp, J.D., M.A., is a New York and Washington State lawyer, mediator, teacher, ethicist and activist who educates, advises, connects and protects entheogenic practitioners. He taught in the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School’s first Psychedelic Law and Policy Boot Camp in 2024. He has served as an Affiliated Professor at the University of Washington Law School and in similar positions at two graduate business schools. He started his career as a NYC Assistant District Attorney, and moved into litigating class actions and major cases. He has been a manager at three of the world’s largest law firms; directed companywide ethics education for a Fortune 50 tech company; and edited a global magazine. In his career as a law teacher, he has personally taught thousands of lawyers and produced hundreds of seminars. He has written for several legal journals and was profiled by Fortune magazine. He has actively supported the work of the Council for the Protection of Sacred Plants and is a founding member of the Psychedelic Bar Association. He is very active in the Sacred Garden Community Entheist church, and served on its inaugural Ethics Council. 

• Deepak Sarma, Ph.D., M.A., is the Inaugural Distinguished Scholar in the Public Humanities, Case Western Reserve University. After earning a BA in religion from Reed College, Sarma attended the Divinity School at the University of Chicago where they received a PhD in the philosophy of religions, and specialized in Indian philosophy. Sarma has wondered if experiences are real or not. And if perceptions are merely projections on an underlying undifferentiated and real substrate. His own congenital epistemic confusion, compounded by a TBI in 1995, led to reflections about mysticism, consciousness and psychedelics. Sarma writes and researches about psychedelics, Cultural Theory, philosophy, post-colonial studies, museology, the Grateful Dead, “Hinduism,” contemporary Hinduism, bioethics, and Madhva Vedanta. Verily, their job is to shed light and not to master. 

• Varun Soni is the dean of religious and spiritual life at the University of Southern California, where he also served as the inaugural vice provost of campus wellness and crisis intervention. He teaches courses in the Domsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences, the Marshall School of Business, and the Chan Division of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy. 

Introducing Petrie-Flom’s POPLAR and PULSE Affiliated Researchers on Psychedelics