As inquiries into Jeffrey Epstein’s dealings with nonprofits and other philanthropists bring new revelations, we’re keeping a running summary of related news and stories about the resulting fallout.
From the Chronicle
Monday, January 13, 2020
Disgraced billionaire and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein visited the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at least nine times and gave $850,000 to the institution, as officials there sought to keep the relationship under wraps, a new report says. Particularly egregious was former Media Lab director Joi Ito’s relationship with Epstein, which included offering advice about how to manage the bad press Epstein received when some of his victims sued him, according to the report. Ito received $1.7 million from Epstein for the lab and his own investment funds. Another offender was mechanical engineering professor Seth Lloyd, who deposited a $60,000 gift from Epstein into his bank account and did not tell MIT. Meanwhile, the university, which was accepting money from Epstein when other institutions refused, had no policy for dealing with controversial donors. (Boston Globe)
Plus: The MIT report does little to settle the question of tech magnates’ complicity in Epstein’s philanthropy and reputation laundering. For instance, although the institution’s records say that a $2 million gift that Bill Gates made to the Media Lab was done under the direction of Epstein, Gates has denied that. The report found no evidence that Gates was acting at the behest of Epstein, leaving the conflicting accounts in place. Likewise, the report details more interaction between LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman and Epstein than the previously disclosed dinner that Hoffman hosted for Silicon Valley’s heavy hitters, to which he invited the disgraced billionaire. Hoffman has apologized for his role in helping to rehabilitate Epstein’s reputation. (Vox)
Plus: New MIT Report Details University’s Deeper Relationship With Jeffrey Epstein (Chronicle of Higher Education)
Also: MIT Puts Tenured Professor on Paid Leave Over Epstein’s Donations (Daily Beast)
Friday, September 13, 2019
In Wake of MIT-Epstein News, ‘Whistleblower Aid’ Sees Uptick in Informants, Including Nonprofits
It’s unclear whether exposing a major controversy in the philanthropic world — whistle-blower Signe Swenson’s accusations against MIT — will pose a fundraising challenge.
Thursday, September 12, 2019
MIT Scandal Exposes a Crisis of Ethics at All Nonprofits (Opinion)
Signe Swenson raised concerns with her supervisors that she says were ignored
Wednesday, September 11, 2019
Whistle-Blower Tells the Backstory of Jeffrey Epstein and MIT Media Lab
At too many charities, we value donations over everything else. If fundraisers don’t work to improve the situation, we face loss of trust from donors and possible government regulation.
From Elsewhere Online
Friday, December 6, 2019
An Ethicist Explains Why Philanthropy Is No License to do Bad Stuff (Conversation)
Monday, December 2, 2019
Jeffrey Epstein’s Virgin Islands foundation repeatedly exaggerated its donations and operated for a decade after losing its tax-exempt status. The foundation made exaggerated, inaccurate, or unverified claims about its support for the Tribeca Film Festival, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Mount Sinai Hospital cancer research. It apparently also claimed total annual contributions of $200 million, although it had collected only $20 million since its founding in 2000. After losing its tax-exempt status in 2008, the foundation made claims that helped Epstein clean up his reputation after his sex crimes conviction that same year. Coming Clean on Dirty Money After the Epstein Scandal (Financial Times — subscription)
Monday, November 4, 2019
Students Are Demanding MIT Fire a Professor Who Visited Epstein in Prison (Vice).
Tuesday, October 15, 2019
Bill Gates Met With Jeffrey Epstein Many Times, Despite His Past (New York Times)
Thursday, October 10, 2019
Harvard Retains External Counsel to Assist Epstein Internal Review (Harvard Crimson).
Friday, September 20, 2019
Scientific research was a field ripe for infiltration by the likes of Jeffrey Epstein. Women in STEM get fewer opportunities for breakthrough research, and they were often missing from meetings between Epstein and top scientists, who “didn’t seem to mind leaving out their professional female peers.” (Verge)
In a 2017 interview, Epstein said he liked to fund researchers who were looking for major breakthroughs, rather than supporting the kind of slow-moving projects the Gates Foundation funds. He belittled the MacArthur grants for being “politically correct” and said, “Now, I’m all for diversity, but I’m for diversity of excellent ideas, not for diversity in the people who receive grants.” (Science)
Thursday, September 19, 2019
The Jeffrey Epstein scandal, and others, reveal a need for more transparency and uniformity when nonprofit organizations weigh the ethics of accepting contributions. They need to diversify the bodies that make those decisions, and they need to ask several questions, including: Is there a difference between bad money and money from bad people? How should harm be measured? Can bad money become good if it’s used for good purposes? (MIT Technology Review)
More than 60 of MIT’s Leading Female Faculty Members Confront University President Over Epstein (Boston Globe)
Bill Gates Regrets Meeting With Jeffrey Epstein (Axios)
Wednesday, September 18, 2019
The Jeffrey Epstein scandals at Harvard and MIT remind us that the intersection of science, academe, and money remains a male preserve. Even as university science departments work toward inclusion, the mingling of high-powered philanthropy and elite science has created a “new old-boy network” that is even less accessible to women “because it lies outside the university.” (Washington Post)
The MIT-Epstein Story Spurs a Debate About Dirty Money in Philanthropy (WGBH)
The Jeffrey Epstein Donations: Is an Apology From the MIT President Good Enough? (Boston Globe)
Computer Scientist Richard Stallman Resigns From MIT After Comments About Epstein Scandal (Washington Post)
The Problem With Sugar-Daddy Science (Atlantic)
Sackler Money Complicates Donation Policies for Museums (Associated Press)
See the Chronicle’s compilation of news about Jeffrey Epstein and nonprofits.
Tuesday, September 17, 2019
Harvard should give away an amount equal to all the gifts it received from Jeffrey Epstein, not just the $186,000 it has remaining. Universities should be much tougher on themselves about whose money they accept and break their dependence on the super-rich, which undermines the integrity of the institutions. (Opinion: Boston Globe)
Stanford Reveals It Received $50,000 Gift From Jeffrey Epstein (Mercury News).
Monday, September 16, 2019
Although university administrators and researchers are coming under scrutiny for their roles in pursuing donations from Epstein, the soul-searching is reaching deep into institutions. At MIT, a graduate student is reckoning with her small part — mailing Epstein a thank-you gift — while her professor, noted architect and designer Neri Oxman, faces media questions about $125,000 in contributions from Epstein to her lab. (Boston Globe)
What’s next for nonprofits and their donor vetting processes. Fundraising experts suggest that the controversy over the Epstein gifts to MIT will prompt other nonprofits to tighten their systems for deciding whether to accept contributions from controversial sources. (Boston Globe)
Jeffrey Epstein fits into a long American history of philanthropy by super-rich men who have committed illegal or immoral acts or who espoused odious views: Howard Hughes, Henry Ford, and Andrew Carnegie, to name a few. His secret gifts to MIT’s Media Lab suggest that the system for accepting contributions has become “a pool of dark money.” (Wired)
Harvard professor and anti-corruption activist Lawrence Lessig has argued that, while institutions should not take money from unsavory figures like Epstein, if they do, unanimity is the best policy because it does not allow donors to launder their reputations. But isn’t that laundering happening in a more subtle way? (New York Times)
More Epstein News
Moulton Gives Away Cash from Donor Linked to Epstein (Boston Globe)
Can the MIT Media Lab Save Itself? (Boston Globe)
Jeffrey Epstein ‘Facilitated’ Construction of Harvard-Linked Building (New York Post)
Friday, September 13, 2019
Harvard received $9 million from Jeffrey Epstein from 1998 to 2007, most of it to establish the university’s program on evolutionary dynamics. Epstein was convicted of sex crimes in 2008. In a letter to people affiliated with Harvard, President Larry Bacow said the university would expand its inquiry into Epstein-linked giving to include donations the financier might have facilitated, as appears to have happened at MIT. Harvard officials said $186,000 remaining from Epstein’s gifts will be used to help victims of human trafficking. (Boston Globe)
LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman apologized for his role in laundering Epstein’s reputation by inviting him to a 2015 dinner with Palo Alto, Calif., with other tech titans. (Axios)
Top MIT officials knew about Epstein’s post-conviction gifts to the Media Lab and stipulated that they remain anonymous. President Rafael Reif acknowledged that he had signed a thank-you letter to the financier in 2012, six weeks after taking his post. (Boston Globe) Read Reif’s letter on MIT’s probe into Epstein’s philanthropy at the school. (MIT News)
Thursday, September 12, 2019
Jeffrey Epstein held a Deutsche Bank account for a charity he incorporated in the U.S. Virgin Islands apparently to generate tax deductions fraudulently. The Gratitude America Ltd. foundation, begun in 2012, claimed on tax returns to have made major donations to organizations — including Elton John’s AIDS charity, a historic-preservation group, and a cancer research institute in California — that say they never received the funds. Other listed recipients did get contributions from Epstein-linked entities but not from Gratitude America. (Wall Street Journal — subscription)
Evidence that Media Lab director Joi Ito used Epstein to facilitate contributions from rich donors leaves many unanswered questions, including why one of those donors, Bill Gates — who knows how to give money on his own — would need Epstein’s help. Gates has denied that the gifts were linked to Epstein. Another mystery is why MIT would need Epstein’s help in attracting funds. (New York)
The decision to take money from tainted donors is not always clear-cut. Recipients should weigh whether the money was gained immorally or illegally, whether the donation is being used for reputation-laundering, and, if the gift is anonymous, whether it violates the public’s trust in an organization. (Quartz)
Opinion on Epstein and the MIT Fallout
Cash Rules Everything Around Colleges and Universities (Boston Globe)
American Universities Are Addicted to Billionaires (New York Times)
Why MIT Media Lab Thought It Was Doing Right by Secretly Accepting Jeffrey Epstein’s Money (Vox)
Wednesday, September 11, 2019
Emails show that top officials at MIT knew about Jeffrey Epstein’s gifts to the institution. Fundraisers provided emails that showed top university administrators agreed to keep quiet about Epstein’s gift and his work to attract other donors to support the MIT Media Lab. (Boston Globe)
The Council on Foreign Relations is among the many groups doing some soul-searching for having accepted contributions from Jeffrey Epstein after the financier was convicted of sex crimes in 2008. (Washington Post)
The urgent imperative of raising money in academe gave rise to the Epstein scandal, but it also creates other traps that get less attention, writes Jeffrey Flier, a Harvard professor and former dean of its medical school. (Opinion: Stat)
Tuesday, September 10, 2019
While MIT is reeling from allegations of close ties to Jeffrey Epstein, Harvard and the Universities of Arizona and British Columbia say they won’t return donations from the late financier, who was arrested on sex-trafficking charges. Other universities haven’t said what they plan to do, and some that received contributions from charitable entities run by Epstein didn’t realize the gifts were from him. (Associated Press)
Epstein directed his business associates to lobby aggressively for a meeting with Microsoft founder Bill Gates. In 2013, Gates met with Epstein and other philanthropists to discuss ways to increase giving. (CNBC)
Meanwhile, Gates’s office denies that a $2 million gift to MIT was linked to Epstein, as claimed in emails published in the New Yorker. A Gates representative said the donation was made directly to the university and that it wasn’t earmarked for the program for which Epstein was raising money. (Associated Press)
The Epstein scandal is a teachable moment for colleges and universities to examine their willingness to accept money from donors whose actions directly oppose their values and mission, even if they’re not overtly criminal, writes Seth Mnookin, director of MIT’s Graduate Program in Science Writing. (Stat News)
Over time, the MIT Media Lab became more focused on its financial partnerships with corporations than on developing technologies to improve the world, according to Slate correspondent Justin Peters. He argues that “moral vacuity” helped make the Epstein scandal possible. (Slate)
Monday, September 9, 2019
Joi Ito, director if MIT’s Media Lab, resigned Saturday as a New Yorker investigation found that he went to great lengths to obscure donations from wealthy convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who killed himself in jail last month. It reported Ito’s extensive efforts to disguise the donations — listing them as anonymous, using only Epstein’s initials when documenting communications with him and trying to keep his campus visit quiet. According to the report, Epstein also helped facilitate donations from Bill Gates. (New Yorker)
Signe Swenson, who worked at the lab at the time told NPR that she was so concerned for the safety of the two young women who were with Epstein during his MIT visits that she “made sure that if they needed anything, we were there.” She even checked the garbage after they left in case there either of them left a note asking for help. (NPR)
Ito also resigned from the boards of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundations. (New York Times)
Fundraising experts say the allegations about development officers prompt questions about whether proper safeguards were in place at MIT, and other observers question why the Media Lab was willing to take money from tainted sources. MIT has promised to hire an outside law firm to investigate. (Boston Globe)
Plus, Brown University put a fundraiser on leave who was involved in the actions at MIT. (Brown Daily Herald)