Harvard University has some excellent news about its previous ties to Jeffrey Epstein, the financier and alleged sex trafficker who died in his prison cell last August. According to an official report released Friday afternoon, the 2007 arrival of its new president, Drew Faust, led the university to make clear that Epstein’s money was no longer welcome. She acted around the time Epstein pleaded guilty to two state charges of sex criminal offenses;-LRB- and with her choice, Harvard turned off a spigot that had actually currently sent $9.1 million its method.
However the report includes a far-less-positive story about Harvard, too. Maybe that’s why it ended up being launched prior to a weekend in the middle of the worst pandemic in a century. By the time Faust acted, Epstein had actually already gained admittance, of a sort, into among the country’s most prominent and exclusive universities, and he was not about to leave. He ‘d procured a yearlong visiting fellowship in the Psychology Department, shepherded by the department’s chair, Stephen Kosslyn, to whom he had previously supplied $200,000 in funds. Epstein had actually also staked out an academic bachelor pad– Office 610– inside the new head office of the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, which was developed in 2003 with the help of his $6.5 million contribution.
Though Epstein was, by 2008, a registered sex wrongdoer, he nonetheless had routine meetings on Harvard’s campus, made possible through his 24- hour access to the PED’s meeting room and offices. He met scholars and political leaders there, the report says, while also hosting dinner parties. “He was regularly accompanied on these gos to by girls,” the report notes, who acted as his assistants and were “described as being in their 20 s.”
In other words, Epstein was able to pretend to be a Harvard-based scholar, long after the school had actually made a point of decreasing any further contributions. His access to Workplace 610 lasted until October 2018, less than a year before his death in a prison cell while facing new federal sexual-abuse charges.
The rejection of his money still stung. Every year, Epstein
