Professors Reject Petition for Leary

Fear of being associated with Dr. Timothy Leary's experiments with mind-expanding drugs has apparently kept all but one professor at Harvard from signing a petition supporting Leary's appeal for release from Federal prison.

The petition condemns the $5 million bail being set for Leary, the highest ever given a U.S. citizen. Leary was recently returned to the U.S. from Afghanistan after having escaped from a minimum security prison while serving a 20 year prison term for possession of marijuana.

Drafted by Ginsberg

The petition, drafted by poet-author Allen Ginsberg and Richard Alpert, former assistant professor of Psychology and Education, protests Leary's punishment "as a symbol of society's common anxiety concerning drug abuse."

The only person thus far to sign the petition is poet Anthony Hecht, visiting professor of English. He was not available for comment yesterday.

"People felt they'd be lending their name to something more than trying to get Leary out of jail," Lindsay C. Gillies '76, one of two students circulating the petition, said of the reluctance of many professors to sign.

Leary, a former lecturer on Clinical Psychology, was fired by Harvard in 1963. Alpert was fired the same year for giving conscious-expanding drugs to an undergraduate. Leary worked closely with Alpert in his studies of psilocybin and mescaline.