Report: MIT took Epstein’s money until near the end
WASHINGTON
A report Friday by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology offered a mea culpa for nine visits and $850,000 in donations from convicted sex offender Jeffrey E. Epstein but absolved most school officials of any wrongdoing.
Along with the release of a 61-page report, MIT, one of the nation’s most prestigious higherlearning institutions, announced it was placing a tenured mechanical engineering professor who befriended Epstein, Seth Lloyd, on paid academic leave pending further review.
Significantly, the report details how MIT continued to take money from Epstein — a convicted felon and Level Three sex offender — up until reporting by the Miami Herald in its Perversion of Justice series made him too politically toxic.
The report said that as late as September 2018, Joi Ito, the former director of MIT’s Media Lab, got sign-off from senior officials on a proposed $500,000 donation that conformed to criteria established by several mem
A report released Friday details how MIT continued to take money from Jeffrey Epstein until reporting by the Miami Herald made him too politically toxic to justify accepting the donations.
bers of the university’s senior team to manage their discomfort — and the potential reputational risk — associated with taking money from Epstein.
The framework, established after Ito had first made senior officials aware of potential donations from Epstein in 2013, was to accept donations from Epstein anonymously and in relatively small amounts, so as to prevent Epstein from using the donations to “launder” his reputation.
The Media Lab ultimately accepted $525,000 from Epstein between
2013 and 2017. Ito also got $1.25 million in funding from Epstein for two personal companies.
Ito repeatedly tried to solicit even bigger donations from Epstein, including pitching the financier in 2016 on a $12 million fellowship program. Ito, in turn, provided Epstein advice on how to “mollify the bad press” from articles stemming from revelations in civil suits filed by Epstein’s victims, a footnote in Friday’s report said.
It wasn’t until after the Miami Herald’s Perversion of Justice series was published in November 2018 that Ito decided to cut ties with Epstein and reject a proposed donation from the financier in February 2019. Several months later Epstein was arrested. He was found dead in a Manhattan jail cell on Aug. 10. Ito resigned from MIT in September 2019.
Epstein repeatedly violated the terms of the framework established by MIT officials, issuing news releases touting his support of MIT and various professors, but the university continued to accept money from him anonymously despite this, the report said.
He also took credit for donations to the university that he did not actually make. The Media Lab corrected media reports about the falsely attributed donations but didn’t indicate that it had received other support from the convicted sex offender.
Epstein’s first donations to MIT after his conviction were actually made to Lloyd in 2012.
The report indicates that two donations Lloyd accepted from Epstein in 2012 were part of a strategy by Epstein to reopen doors to the academic world that had closed after his 2008 conviction.
“[I]m going to give you two 50k tranches to see if the line jingles,” Epstein emailed Lloyd, according to the report.
Lloyd didn’t initially indicate that the donations were from Epstein, leading an MIT fundraising officer to conclude that Epstein’s assistant, Lesley Groff, was the actual donor.
Lloyd later took $125,000 from Epstein in 2017 to fund a sabbatical, and he revealed to the law firm conducting the investigation on MIT’s behalf that he had also accepted a $60,000 personal gift from Epstein in 2005 or 2006 — before Epstein’s conviction — that he had deposited into his personal bank account.
“The committee is troubled that MIT had a relationship with Epstein and that it was more extensive and lasted longer than has previously been publicly reported,” the executive committee of the MIT’s governing body said in a statement accompanying the report. “The solicitation of donations led to multiple campus visits by Epstein that involved various faculty members and, in at least one visit, some students.”
The report’s other findings included:
Epstein gave
$850,000 to the school between 2002 and 2017, and $750,000 of that came after his 2008 conviction. Epstein made at least nine visits to the campus between 2013 and 2017.
Three vice presidents were aware that Epstein had donated money after his 2008 conviction, but that did not violate school policy because there was no policy for handling controversial donors. MIT said it still does not have such a policy but is in the process of formulating one.
The report found no fault with MIT President L. Rafael Reif, who has faced calls to resign in the wake of the Epstein revelations. On Friday, he issued a forward-looking statement.
“That it was possible for Epstein to have so many opportunities to interact with members of our community is distressing and unacceptable; I cannot imagine how painful it must be for survivors of sexual assault and abuse,” Reif wrote. “Clearly, we must establish policy guardrails to prevent this from happening again.”
The revelations Friday are likely to put pressure on Harvard University, which on Sept. 12 announced in a “Message to the Community” that it was launching a review of his giving to the university. Most of his gifts, the school said, were not endowed but received and spent on research.
The gifts predated Epstein’s conviction and an offered donation after his conviction was rejected. But his seemingly close relationship with several Harvard professors has put the university under the media microscope.
Asked if a report was forthcoming, Harvard spokesman Jason Newton said that “Harvard’s review is ongoing.”
Kevin G. Hall: 202-383-6038, @KevinGHall
Ben Wieder: 202-383-6125, benbwieder