4 ms·

I chatted with a friend who was in a Harvard class with one of the biology professors funded by Epstein. In like 2015 or so (before Epstein was a huge public de

I chatted with a friend who was in a Harvard class with one of the biology professors funded by Epstein. In like 2015 or so (before Epstein was a huge public deal) someone asked him about it and his response to the class was "What am I supposed to do - tell the sex offender to keep his money so he can spend it on more sex crimes?" I think the issue is that there is always something in return. If you accepted money and it was truly anonymous and Epstein never talked to the professors or whatever than it would be hard to say its bad. But clearly people (good or bad - but always rich) are getting a lot of prestige, access, bragging rights, or whatever from these type of donations.

unishark 6y ago
I'm with the professor on this one. This practice of shaming organizations because they received cash gifts seems odd to me. Seems like another kind of "first world" angst that I'll be struggling to explain to friends in other countries. It's not like they were naming a building after him. As for always getting something in return, in economics you must always consider the alternative. The man had millions of dollars. For millions of dollars you can get "something" from all directions. Harvard's refusal to take his money would not have made him nine million dollars poorer. And as long as Harvard-donor-bragging-rights are just as available to anyone as a multi-million dollar beach house would be instead, I don't see why it matters.