Antonio Gracias, the founder, CEO and chief investment officer of Valor Equity Partners since 1995, is giving Harvard $16 million to study psychedelics in society and culture via the Gracias Family Foundation, the university announced yesterday (Oct. 16).
“Harvard is the ideal place to explore the topic of psychedelics from new angles and to craft a framework for their legal, safe, and appropriate impact on society,” Gracias, who was a director at Tesla from 2007 to 2021, said in a statement. His foundation is interested in the possibilities of using psychedelics for therapeutic use—a conversation that’s even reached the upper echelons of politics, with talk of including funding for psychedelics research in the national defense bill earlier this year.
The interdisciplinary effort across the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard Law School, and Harvard Divinity School will consider the far-reaching impact of psychedelics through various lenses, including law, policy, ethics, religion and spirituality, the nature of consciousness, and art and literature.
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