Event Details

Entanglements between psychedelics and religion are nothing new. Such intersections span countless cultures across millennia, presumably ever since humans started gathering to ingest psychoactive plants and fungi. This fact has both enchanted and tormented modern researchers who wish to study these substances within the secular frameworks of scientific materialism.

We now find ourselves at an intriguing moment in the history of psychedelics and religion. Nearly a decade ago, a team of scientists from Johns Hopkins and NYU observed the effects of psilocybin on dozens of religious leaders from various traditions. The researchers sought to replicate and improve upon the groundbreaking “Good Friday Experiment” of 1962, conducted beneath Howard Thurman’s Marsh Chapel by a Harvard PhD candidate who sought to measure the impact of psilocybin on local divinity students in a devotional setting. Central questions underlying both studies were: Given the tendencies of psychedelics to induce “mystical” or “spiritual” states typically associated with religions, what happens when you administer them to seasoned religious practitioners from traditions that do not normally incorporate psychedelics? Are these individuals somehow primed for the psycho-spiritual terrain? Do psychedelic experiences change their religious identities or outlooks?

For a variety of reasons, publication of the scientific article from the Hopkins/NYU study was stalled for years. Just recently, on May 19th, Michael Pollan published his own article in The New Yorker about the study, its contexts, and its controversies. Then, the scientific article finally appeared on May 30th in the journal Psychedelic Medicine. During a panel discussion we are hosting at the Graduate Theological Union and via livestream on June 11, Pollan will engage in discussion with Rabbi Zac Kamenetz, who participated in the Hopkins/NYU study; Aidan Seale-Feldman, an anthropologist researching contemporary psychedelic “churches” with an eye toward secularism; Bia Labate, an anthropologist who has published extensively on Indigenous plant medicine traditions, as well as other marginalized psychedelic cultures; and Michael Silver, a neuroscientist and co-director of the UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics. Sam Shonkoff, a scholar of religion at the Graduate Theological Union, will moderate. Together, these speakers will shed light on the cultural significance of the Hopkins/NYU study and how its results and reception ought to inform perspectives on psychedelics, religions, and the entanglements between them. 

This event is hosted by the GTU with support from the Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics and the Berkeley Center for the Study of Religion.

To learn more about earning a Master of Arts in Psychedelics and Spirituality from the GTU, visit our website.

If you find that you are unable to join us in person, you can access the panel discussion via livestream at: youtube.com/@gtuberkeley.

Michael Pollan is a writer, teacher, and activist. His May 19, 2025 New Yorker article “This Is Your Priest on Drugs” focuses on a study by researchers at Johns Hopkins University and N.Y.U. about religious leaders’ experiences with psilocybin. Pollan is the author of several highly acclaimed books, including This is Your Mind on Plants, How to Change Your Mind, Cooked, Food Rules, In Defense of Food, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and The Botany of Desire, all of which were named New York Times Bestsellers. In addition, The Omnivore’s Dilemma and How to Change Your Mind were listed among the ten best books of the year by The New York Times. Pollan teaches writing in the English department at Harvard University, and for many years, served as the Knight Professor of Journalism at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. Several of his books have been adapted for television, such as series based on How to Change Your Mind (2022) and Cooked (2015) that are streaming on Netflix, and The Botany of Desire and In Defense of Food that premiered on PBS. From 2022-23 Pollan was a Guggenheim Fellow and in 2010 he was named one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world. Pollan lives in Berkeley with his wife, the painter Judith Belzer.
 
Aidan Seale-Feldman is a medical anthropologist interested in affliction and its treatments who has spent the past decade conducting ethnographic research in the Himalayas. Based on this research, her forthcoming book, The Work of Disaster: Crisis and Care along a Himalayan Faultline, is an ethnography of mental health governance in Nepal in the aftermath of disaster. Dr. Seale-Feldman’s current research focuses on the mainstreaming of mysticism in the United States. Funded by the John Templeton Foundation, her current project, Ethical Substance: Psychedelic Medicine in Times of Social and Spiritual Crisis, is an interdisciplinary study that explores the incorporation of mystical experience in to the lives of secular Americans and their therapeutic practices. Dr. Seale-Feldman’s work has been published in journals such as Cultural Anthropology, Ethos, HIMALAYA: The Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies, and the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, and has also been featured in The Microdose. Dr. Seale-Feldman received her PhD in Anthropology from UCLA in 2018. Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Notre Dame, she was a Postdoctoral Research Associate and Lecturer in Bioethics at the University of Virginia.
 
Zac Kamenetz is a rabbi and community leader who is based in Berkeley. A highly sought-after educator and qualified MBSR instructor, Zac’s work is centered on seeking answers to life’s essential questions within the context of Jewish tradition and embodied spiritual practice. Zac is the founder and CEO of Shefa, an independent 501(c)(3) organization that was founded in 2020 and is dedicated to supporting Jewish psychedelic explorers in North America and abroad. Shefa, a word that means "flowing abundance” in Hebrew, is helping to cultivate greater awareness in the Jewish community about the potential rewards and risks of psychedelic use in a variety of settings; advocating for a more culturally competent and religiously inclusive approach to Jewish experience in the psychedelic world; and integrating Jewish spiritual traditions and psychedelic exploration in ethical and authentic ways. Through these efforts, Zac is pioneering a movement to bring safe and supported psychedelic use into the Jewish spiritual tradition, advocating for individuals and communities to heal inherited trauma, and inspiring a Jewish religious and creative renaissance in the 21st century. Zac is also a co-founder of the Jewish Psychedelic Summit, is trained in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapeutic care through Inbodied Life, and is certified in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy by the Hakomi Institute of Northern California.

Bia Labate (Beatriz Caiuby Labate) is an anthropologist, educator, author, speaker, and activist, committed to the protection of sacred plants while amplifying the voices of marginalized communities in the psychedelic science field. As a queer Brazilian anthropologist based in San Francisco, she has been profoundly influenced by her experiences with ayahuasca since 1996. Dr. Labate has a Ph.D. in social anthropology from the University of Campinas (UNICAMP) in Brazil. Her work focuses on plant medicines, drug policy, shamanism, ritual, religion, and social justice. She is the Executive Director of the Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines and serves as a Public Education and Culture Specialist at the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). Additionally, she is a Visiting Scholar at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley and an act as advisor for around 15 organizations, among them the Veteran Mental Health Leadership Coalition and the Alaska Entheogenic Awareness Council. Dr. Labate is also a co-founder of the Interdisciplinary Group for Psychoactive Studies (NEIP) in Brazil and the editor of its site. She has authored, co-authored, and co-edited 28 books, three special-edition journals, and numerous peer-reviewed and online publications.

Michael A. Silver is a Professor of Optometry and Vision Science and Neuroscience at the University of California, Berkeley. He has served as the Faculty Director of the UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics (BCSP) since its founding in 2020. His research investigates how the human brain constructs representations of the visual environment and how these representations are modified by cognitive processes such as attention, expectation, and learning. He addresses these questions by applying a combination of behavioral, neuroimaging, computational, and pharmacological techniques to the study of both healthy human participants as well as patients who suffer from diseases that affect perceptual processing. Last year, Dr. Silver's group launched the first ever studies involving administration of psychedelics to human research subjects at UC Berkeley. In the BCSP's first five years, it has created a widely read newsletter on psychedelics (The Microdose), conducted and disseminated results from the UC Berkeley Psychedelics Public Perception Survey, launched an award-winning podcast (Altered States), developed a free online course (Psychedelics and the Mind), incubated the BCSP Certificate Program in Psychedelic Facilitation, and supported fellows in the following programs: Ferriss - UC Berkeley Journalism Fellows, Psychedelics in Society and Culture, Indigenous Student Research Fellows, and Mycoskie-UC Berkeley Social Media Fellows and Psychedelic Documentary Fellows.

Sam Shonkoff is the Taube Family Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies at the GTU, where he teaches on Jewish religious thought and methods in the study of religion. His scholarship focuses primarily on German-Jewish and Hasidic theologies, as well as integrations of Hasidic spirituality in relatively secular spheres. Dr. Shonkoff invites students and readers to examine how perspectives on the very fabric of reality are always morphing through interpretive acts, and how these practices are always mutating in the protean habitats of history. He takes an interdisciplinary approach to building bridges across historical, theological, and cultural studies and his commitment to mentoring, public engagement, and expanding interreligious dialogue strengthens the GTU’s significance as a hub for innovative and inclusive theological scholarship. Dr. Shonkoff is co-editor with Ariel Evan Mayse of Hasidism: Writings on Devotion, Community and Life in the Modern World (Brandeis University Press, 2020) and the editor of Martin Buber: His Intellectual and Scholarly Legacy (Brill, 2018). His current research project investigates themes of embodiment in Buber’s representations of Hasidism vis-à-vis the original sources. He earned his PhD with distinction in 2018 from the University of Chicago Divinity School and his MA in 2011 from the University of Toronto, and graduated magna cum laude from Brown University in 2007.