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Harvard closes evolution center after finding connections to Jeffrey Epstein
- jdkee 6y agoIt is simply unfathomable that so many prominent people knew about Epstein’s activities and simply turned a blind eye to him. Similarly to the sexual assault scandals at USC, Penn State and US Gymnastics, the Catholic Church, etc. People know but action is only taken after years or decades of awareness.
- AlexandrB 6y agoI think it's a good barometer for the relationship between money and ethics/law: if you have enough of the former, many people will ignore the latter when dealing with you. In my opinion, this is one reason why massive wealth inequality is bad. It creates a caste of people who are often are immune to the legal system unless they do something sufficiently horrific.
- fallingknife 6y agoOK, but this isn't an example of it. It has never been against the law to know about a crime and not report it. You only get in trouble for that in totalitarian countries.
- loveistheanswer 6y agoIs it "totalitarian" for members of a society to socially castigate people who knowingly associated with child sex traffickers?
- ipnon 6y agoReminds me of Oswald Teichmuller, complex analyst and dedicated Nazi. The ability in mathematics to absolutely prove results correct makes using the research of evil people trivial. I doubt Shinichi Mochizuki gave Teichmuller's membership in the Nazi party a single thought when he published Inter-universal Teichmuller theory, and certainly no one has called for Mochizuki's cancellation or the dismantlement of his research group. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inter-universal_Teichm%C3%BCller_theory https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inter-universal_Teichm%C3%BC...
- mattnewton 6y agoEpstein didn’t do any research to cite, he just had a close relationship with the administration he used to get an office and try to rehabilitate his image.
- duxup 6y agoHelp me out on this one as maybe I don't understand the details: So Epstein was a horrible dude. Did this professor know about that stuff when he gave him these privileges? > he had extensive, previously unreported contact with Epstein. >giving the disgraced wealthy financier an office on campus which he visited more than 40 times between 2010 and 2018. >Epstein’s efforts to use ties to the prestigious university Harvard as a tool to rehabilitate his image None of that sounds particularly strange. Was this all after the Epstein stuff came out? Did professor guy know what Epstein was up to? It doesn't strike me as that odd that a big donor gets recognition / some privileges.
- solosoyokaze 6y agoYes, it was after Epstein was originally arrested for having sex with a minor. Epstein's actions were no secret. Those that worked and associated with him knew what he was up to. This is a good article that lays out how this was common knoweledge: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/peteraldhous/jeffrey-epstein-john-brockman-edge-foundation https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/peteraldhous/jeffrey-ep...
- yorwba 6y ago> This is a good article that lays out how this was common knoweledge: The article names three different people who claim to have had no idea. Maybe they're lying, but I hadn't heard about Epstein before either, so I'm inclined to believe them. I don't think you can claim that it was "common knowledge". (Did you know?)
- solosoyokaze 6y agoThere are many articles that detail the kind of things Epstein would tell these people and how he'd behave around them: * https://slate.com/technology/2019/08/jeffrey-epstein-science-eugenics-sexual-abuse-researchers.html https://slate.com/technology/2019/08/jeffrey-epstein-science... * https://www.motherjones.com/crime-justice/2019/08/jeffrey-epstein-my-very-very-sick-pal/ https://www.motherjones.com/crime-justice/2019/08/jeffrey-ep... * https://newrepublic.com/article/154826/jeffrey-epsteins-intellectual-enabler https://newrepublic.com/article/154826/jeffrey-epsteins-inte... He always had girls around him. I don't believe that one could associate with Epstein and be ignorant of who he was.
- dlpyt 6y agoOne common similarity in these cases is that always relatively powerless people are exposed and "face consequences" (don't we all love that phrase by now). Clinton and Gates also had "connections" to Epstein. The really interesting part is a) who Epstein worked for and b) the powerful people he collected information about. I find it hard to believe that visits to this island were just favors to his friends. More likely he took videos and collected compromising information, Hoover style.
- duxup 6y ago>I find it hard to believe that visits to this island were just favors to his friends. More likely he took videos and collected compromising information, Hoover style. Why would favors to friends be 'hard to believe'? Favors among friends seems like a pretty predictable human trait. You're headed down the tinfoil road here I think.
- phkahler 6y agoExcept we know his brothel was full of video cameras. He had dirt on a lot of people.
- solosoyokaze 6y agoEpstein and his associates have all admitted that there were hidden cameras throughout all of his properties which he used to record the activities of his guests for later blackmail and leverage. Epstein, Maxwell, Guiffre, his staff and many associates have confirmed as much. Epstein also had known ties to multiple intelligence agencies.
- duxup 6y agoDo we know who they actually blackmailed?
- solosoyokaze 6y agoNo, and we're unlikely to find out. According to Acosta, he was let go the first time because: > he was told that Epstein "belonged to intelligence", was "above his pay grade," and to "leave it alone". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Acosta#Non-prosecution_agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Acosta#Non-prosecuti...
- solosoyokaze 6y agoAnd yet Harvard still proudly associates with Alan Dershowitz who was deeply involved with Epstein, has been accused of raping minors with Epstein, and got Epstein off when he was caught the first time. https://hls.harvard.edu/faculty/directory/10210/Dershowitz/ https://hls.harvard.edu/faculty/directory/10210/Dershowitz/ Harvard's connection to Epstein go a lot deeper than just Nowak.
- nabla9 6y agoConnections to Epstein is not good enough reason. There has to shady connections. Epstein was hustler who lived from making connections. Short list of scientists who visited his Pedophile Island: Stephen Hawkins, David Gross, Gerard ‘t Hooft, Lawrence Krauss, Lisa Randall, Martin Nowak, Frank Wilczek.
- solosoyokaze 6y agoIt was well known what Epstein was up to, the people you list were often exposed to Epstein's true behavior: https://slate.com/technology/2019/08/jeffrey-epstein-science-eugenics-sexual-abuse-researchers.html https://slate.com/technology/2019/08/jeffrey-epstein-science...
- nabla9 6y agoEpstein was up to young women, but few thought he was pimping underage girls as your source mentions. There is nothing wrong with having two young girls with you all times. Leonard Cohen did that to his 70s. Some may find it disgusting, but disgust is not good reason for judging others.
- solosoyokaze 6y ago> There is nothing wrong with having two young girls with you all times. In a professional context? You bet there is. When Joi Ito brought Epstein to the MIT Media Lab, he had two young girls with him. When he left, lab members looked through the trash to look for SOS notes the girls may have dropped. Bill Gates is quoted to have told employees that he stated up late at Epstein's house with a beautiful Swedish woman and her young daughter (the Dubins, the daughter was engaged to Epstein when she was underage).
- morelisp 6y agoAt least one scientist on your list is a notorious harasser. As the kids say today, rather than letting his associates update your priors on Epstein, instead let the well-documented multi-decade abuses by Epstein inform your priors about everyone he worked with. Nearly everyone associated with him and his foundation should be non grata in all parts of the academic community.
- Ceezy 6y agoIs the problem the fact that he had an unofficial office or the fact that he may have raped people in this office? 60 visits that's a lot for a dude who forged his carrier.
- Aunche 6y agoIf Epstein wasn't allowed to donate to Harvard, would that have somehow prevented him from sex trafficking? Would it have made the world a better place? I don't understand this contemporary system of morality where if you something wrong without doing anything wrong yourself, you automatically get tainted with its sins. There's no consistency to this system either. People generally only care when someone they already hate is being "complicit."
- solosoyokaze 6y agoYes, he used his connections to Harvard explicitly to pressure women and law enforcement. Multiple Harvard faculty are also accused of raping girls Epstein provided.
- tptacek 6y agoYes! He used these donations to network with elites and manipulated those connections to shield himself. That's how, after being convicted of procuring a child for prostitution in 2008, he was given a brief sentence that included a 6-day-a-week 12-hour-a-day "work release" to his office, and a federal non-prosecution agreement. He obtained that with the help of people like Alan Dershowitz and Steven Pinker, both from Harvard.
- jules-jules 6y agoThank you. I think these connections are not known enough.
- Aunche 6y agoIf the rich and powerful can exploit the real justice system based on hard evidence, they can also exploit the mob justice system based on speculation to destroy their enemies. If this is normalized, then people like Epstein would have more ammunition that they can use for blackmail. >He obtained that with the help of people like Alan Dershowitz and Steven Pinker, both from Harvard. These two people offered Epstein specialized services that let him off easy. I don't see the same clear connection to wrongdoing in this case. All Epstein got from it was an office and a web page thanking him for the large donation. If that's wrong, then Mcdonald's is also wrong for providing him calories required to operate.
- namenotrequired 6y agoRegardless of what they do to its current director and regardless of where some of the center's donated money came from... why did they close the center? Couldn't they find a new director? Or was the whole center somehow involved?
- divbzero 6y agoPart of the challenge is that a large part of the center’s initial funding was from this one source. Furthermore, Professor Nowak is such a key figure as director of this center that it could be hard to find a replacement while he is on probation. Another challenge is that, after Jeffrey Epstein’s character and connection came to light, the name for the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics took on repulsive connotations that the university is right to discard altogether.
- keenreed 6y agoCompare it to Harvey Weinstein. Half of Hollywood knew he is a pig for decades, were exposed, but are still in their positions.
- AndrewBissell 6y agoThis is actually an apt comparison because the vast majority of people who associated with, enabled, and co-conspired with Epstein haven't suffered any consequences either.
- nullifidian 6y agoWhat's with all these half-measures? Let's close America, since Epstein was born here, lived here, payed taxes and what not. We can at least close New York, since it's definitely eternally tainted by him.
- beloch 6y agoThis is simply Harvard protecting it's own revenue stream. Universities, especially Harvard, routinely trade respectability for cash. Harvard is unusually reliant on private endowments. Taking rich people's money and making them look respectable in return is a core part of their operations. So why was taking Epstein's money unusual or wrong? At the time, it wasn't. He was known in certain circles, but not famous, and certainly not infamous. He had money to spend and universities tend not to look too closely at where money comes from if there's enough of it. Quantity has a quality all it's own. Then Epstein became infamous. Even Harvard's ability to confer respectability is finite. Harvard likely started this investigation shortly after the Epstein story trended, not because they didn't know what had been done, but because they needed to be able to say they had handled the situation once people noticed. If they had simply swept it under the rug and then been found out it would have harmed the Univeristy's reputation and ability to confer respectability. Who would buy respectability from a university that thinks nothing of selling it to people like Jeffrey Epstein? Nobody noticed, so Harvard was able to let the "investigation" drag on for a couple years to the point where Epstein should have been mostly forgotten, were he not living on as a meme. The longevity of the Epstein meme and his continuing infamy is likely why Nowak is getting more than a slap on the wrist. Justice must be seen to be done, even if Nowak did nothing that isn't still going on every day at Harvard.