Jeffrey Epstein And His Cozy Relationship With Harvard University

0:00You know what I could really go for right now? Literally anything that comes in a McDonald's carton, wrapper, or bag, or a McDonald's cup. Yes, any of those items you do it. We've got your cravings covered. Now, stop in for the flaky filet of fish, the crispy snack wrap, or a large fries for just $2.99. Limited time only, price and participation may vary. Cannot be combined with any other offer. Everybody and welcome to the program. We're going to get right into it tonight, considering this is a relatively long article. It's really an editorial that was posted by Lawrence Lessig over at the Harvard Crimson. Now, Lawrence Lessig is the R.L. firm and professor of long leadership at Harvard. And he's taking Harvard to task in this editorial, folks. I've been calling for this kind of rhetoric for quite some time.

1:05And very few people in academia were willing to stand up and say anything about this stuff. Dr. Stephen Delay was one of the very few. So it's nice to see Lawrence Lessig show up to the party. I mean, a little late, obviously. But still, what do I always talk about? If the people that are within these institutions aren't holding their peers and each other responsible for their behavior, then how can anybody on the outside ever expect for that to occur? So it starts on the inside. And seeing Lawrence Lessig pen this essay, this editorial here, is certainly a step in the right direction. So let's jump right into it and let's see what he has to say. This appeared in the Harvard Crimson. Author is Lawrence Lessig.

2:06Harvard has apparently concluded its review of its relationship to the convicted child sex offender, Jeffrey E. Epstein. In September, 2019, after expressing that he profoundly regrets Harvard's association with Epstein, University president Lawrence S. Beckow promised to review how we prevent these situations in the future. And what did we get? Like usual, when it comes to these internal reports, or we're going to have a real reflective look in the mirror, and we're going to see how we can be better. Whenever it's that kind of stuff, it usually falls flat on its face, at least with my experience here in the Epstein case. Every single time one of these groups does an internal review, it always turns out to be absolute garbage. The report found Harvard had taken no money from Epstein after his conviction, though there were further questions that merited study.

3:14Two weeks ago, after completing that study, Harvard determined to shutter the research center Epstein's money had founded and discipline, its academic director. Yet in these steps, Harvard has still not given us a fair accounting of our past. And worse, in this latest step, it hides that account behind the scapegoat, and that is definitely the case. They have scapegoated from the jump over at Harvard. None of the people at the top, none of the trustees, Lawrence Beckow, none of these other people that are, you know, top dog at Harvard, people that are supposed to be responsible for this sort of thing, none of these people have felt the full weight of what occurred. None of them have stepped down or lost their positions or lost tenure or lost anything like that. Instead, a few of the people who were getting that money directly from Epstein ended up being the only people to take the fall.

4:15And while they should have, right, the people that facilitated the Epstein money in the first place, the scientists, that he was collecting and that were taking money from him, all of those sons of bitches should have lost their jobs for sure. They should have lost tenure. They should have lost everything, honestly. But the same goes for the people above them. Is there no accountability when it comes to the management level? So to say in this situation, is it just the professors who should be sanctioned, who should lose their jobs, or should everybody who was around at that time, everybody who should have seen what was going on, who didn't either willfully or because they're morons, all of those people should not be in the positions that they're in. There are plenty of capable people to fill those positions. There are three chapters in the evolving relationship between academic institutions and Jeffrey Epstein.

5:17In the first, before his conviction in 2008, everyone loves Epstein. And that is the case. All of these people were gushing over Epstein. Remember the Vanity Fair article? You know, these people were gushing over Epstein. And they'll tell you now that, oh, we had no idea what Jeffrey Epstein was. There was no signs. Nobody had any idea. Meanwhile, we know that's a bunch of BS, right? We all know that that's garbage. Epstein didn't wake up one morning and decide to become an absolute scumbag pervert. This is who he was. This is the kind of person he was. This was his character. All of those crass jokes while you guys are all around at a science conference. That didn't ring a few alarm bells. I mean, come on already. There's a time and place for everything. You know, you're sitting around with the guys, it's a poker game. You want to have some crass language? I get it. Yeah, of course. That's what guys do. I get it.

6:18You're at a science conference. Why do you need to have girls with you? Why do you need to talk about disgusting topics that, you know, these, there's no place for it in the environment or the setting. And that didn't ring any of the alarm bells didn't go off for anybody. It didn't ring any alarm bells for any of these people. Please give me a break. I'm just, you know, I'm so sick of the, well, we had no idea. We didn't hear anything. We didn't see anything. Well, you certainly didn't say anything. In the third after the 2018 article of the Miami Herald detailing his depravity, everyone hates Epstein. Hey, hold on a second. You guys should have hated him long time before that. This stuff was out there. People were talking about who Epstein was. There was, you know, a lot going on in that realm of the atmosphere.

7:18People knew exactly what Epstein was. It didn't take the Julie Brown article to let people know what Jeffrey Epstein was. The Julie Brown article. That got people to start paying attention. But in the second, there's an ambiguous dance between this generous funder, pedophile, and universities that recognize complexity in taking his money. See, and that was one of my biggest problems with this. They knew it was wrong to take old boys' dough, but they did it anyway. And then when they're called out on it, they start with the whole nonsense of, well, what do you mean? We had no idea. You knew everybody knew you took that money anyway. And what you thought was that Jeffrey Epstein was in the clear. He did his time. They weren't going to come get him again because of all of his connections. There was no way that was going to occur. So these dudes hopped right back into bed with them, had their hand out, and Jeffrey Epstein was handing out the hundreds of thousands.

8:25In 2008, former university president Drew G. Faust resolved that complexity with clarity, but incompletely. Unlike others, such as MIT, Faust determined that Harvard would take no more money from Epstein. According to the May 2020 report, yeah, okay. But very much like others, including MIT, she gave no directive about how the many other ways that Epstein was connected to the university should be affected by her determination. Of course, she didn't go all the way. You know what that's called, Mr. Lessig? I'm pretty sure you know you're a very skilled lawyer, very intelligent man, well-schooled, much more well-schooled than me, that's for sure. But the cynic in me says it was left there on purpose as a loophole, so they could still get that money while retaining plausible deniability. In particular, she gave no guidance about how the center that Epstein's main contribution to Harvard had established the program on evolutionary dynamics should negotiate its continued interactions with Epstein.

9:41And I'm sure that Mr. Lessig here is going to give us a different avenue and a different bit of thought. But for me, the cynic in me, and I'm sorry I have to be so cynical when dealing with this case, but the track record has made it so. So it looks to me like this is a loophole that she left in there so that the professors could still continue to rake in the dough while the university at the same time could say, well, look, we have these guidelines in place, we're not involved in that, we didn't know anything about it. So it was kind of a, you know, wink, wink, nudge, nudge, kind to deal. In particular, oh, past that excuse me, because from the start, Epstein was constantly engaged with PD and with others through PD, and that's the program on evolutionary dynamics. That's the way that they talk about it, you know, when they abbreviate it, it's called the PD. According to a letter that Martin Noak, the PD's academic director, sent to administrators when the center was founded, Harvard's then president, Lawrence H. Summers, huh, that name sounds familiar, doesn't it?

10:57Got Epstein to pay the rent for PD's office, not on Harvard's campus, but in commercial space in Harvard Square. And you all remember Larry Summers, right? Lawrence H. Summers, good friend of Obama's, you know, one of those guys. Yeah, Larry Summers, typical, academia, Scuzzball. From the beginning, Epstein treated that space as a second office in Cambridge. Epstein traveled to Cambridge regularly to meet with Harvard's most luminary, including Summers regularly, but not exclusively at PD. Those meetings are described as interesting and intellectual in Noak's letter. There is no suggestion they involved any inappropriate behavior. Well, beyond, of course, the inappropriateness of including Epstein himself.

11:57So, I'm certainly not laying out the charges that there is inappropriate behavior, as far as abusing girls here. I'll leave that to some of the other fantasists that are floating around. What I am saying, though, is Larry Summers is an absolute jerk, an absolute Scuzzball, and an absolute moron. Larry Summers is the kind of guy that epitomizes everything that was wrong with academia and their relationship with Epstein. Politically connected, locked in at the university, top of his field, and the exact kind of guy, Jeffrey Epstein, loved hanging around. These stories continued long after the 2008 ban on raising Epstein money. The question is, why? Some thought the ban would be temporary. Some hoped Epstein's reputation might be restored.

12:57All right, well, hold on, hit the brakes. Restored? His reputation restored, huh? Again, we're not talking about somebody who was involved in a money scam here. We're not talking about somebody who got into a fight in the bar, and things went too far, and the person he was fighting with got hurt severely. You know, people make mistakes, right? You can forgive mistakes is what I'm trying to get at. But this is no gray area mistake. This is no, ah, man, I really should, I really, really screwed up this time. This wasn't, that's not what this was. This was human trafficking of children point blank period. Some believed it morally obligatory to give a criminal a chance at redemption, and that's such BS to all of these elites love to talk about that. But what have they done to really give people who need a second chance, a second chance, the do that got popped for selling some pot?

14:02Guy on the corner who got nail with some crack who's doing a lot longer than the dude who had the same amount of powdered coke. Where are they to help these people out? No where to be found are they? They love to blow V8 and they love the virtue signal, but they don't love to strap on their boots and get down to work. No act was told as much by his spiritual advisor, which he shared in his letter to the administration, his spiritual advisor, huh? I mean, are you really? Your spiritual advisor told you that you should help Jeffrey Epstein refurbish his image, huh? Talk about passing the book. Talk about absolutely passing the book. Whatever the reason, the reality is that there was no real change in the practical relationship that Epstein had to Harvard beyond his ability to write Harvard a check. The meetings continued. The relationships grew deeper. The conversations on and near campus were many.

15:08And there are just tons and tons of people who have talked about this, who have witnessed it, and it's in their report itself. So there's no denying Jeffrey Epstein's presence on the campus and around these professors. What continued as well was PED's need for money like Epstein's. PED's rent was substantial. No act reports that at first, after Foss Ban, Harvard had agreed to assume it. But after the financial crisis, no act was informed that he would have to raise it himself. So again, Harvard is not getting off the hook here, at least not with me. Some people might let him off the hook, but not me. They're the institution here. They're the ones where the money is. The book stops. So after the financial meltdown, you clowns didn't have the money to fund this department. So you told this professor it's up to him to do it himself. And then there was no checks and balances like you had never seen Epstein's name before.

16:15All of its smacks of absolute BS. Foundations usually don't give academic grantees money to cover rent. So everyone knew those additional funds would have to be, like Epstein's, from private individuals. An FAS development office staff member encouraged Noak as late as 2017 to ask Epstein to ask his friends to help according to the May 2020 report. So we want Epstein's money, but we don't want the stink of Epstein on it. So let's have Epstein middleman it and get some of his rich A-hole homies to fill the void. And then that'll give us the cover we need because we could say, well, Epstein didn't give us the money. Insert scumbag here did. As late as 2017 to ask Epstein to ask his friends to help. Noak followed Harvard's direction. Epstein obliged, securing substantial support from his friend.

17:25Oh, here's a name that all of you are going to know. Leon D. Black among others. So you see the Leon Black story just keeps getting deeper and deeper. The quicksand has a hold. And we talked about this months ago, months and months and months ago, that Leon Black was in this up to his ears and that he has some explaining to do. Now you add on the new allegations against Leon Black? Oh, yeah. Oh, boy is up the creek right now without a paddle. There's no doubt about that. Throughout this period, apparently no one with any authority, certainly not the university, not its former president's summers, not its development office, not the dozen or so Harvard's most elite, saw any inappropriateness in this ongoing academic relationship. And that right there says it all. Everybody involved, everybody that was around, if they're still there, if they're still drawing these gigantic ass paychecks at this overpriced once great university, they should all be fired.

18:32A new broom sweeps clean. What they should do is get Morgan Freeman's character from that stand by me movie and have him show up at Harvard and whip these guys into shape. Despite the obvious harm that a sex offender could trigger in the members of our community, who themselves might have been victims of sexual abuse, the elite of Harvard's elite continue to nurture a relationship with a sex offender. Yeah, because that's what the elite do. I hate to be the bearer of bad news for anyone who holds these people up on high. But the so-called elite? Yeah, that's a class of sick ass people. A whole group of people who literally have zero morals and who do not care about anything that does not increase their wealth or their power. And that's not just me saying it, their actions bear it out.

19:34Despite the clarity of all of our views now, they apparently saw no wrong in what all of them were doing then. At least until chapter three, when all worked diligently to forget what had happened between 2008 and 2018. Yo, less big is going hard in the pain here. He's leaving, he's really shooting from the hip and giving all of these guys the business as he should. It's about time someone at Harvard stood up and did the right thing. Harvard's May 2020 report celebrated false moral clarity, but it identified some details that required further investigation. In March, Harvard completed that determination. It did not release any public accounting. Instead, its conclusions were shared internally by email to the affected departments. Traditionally, that email was leaked. And in this day and age, if you have some sort of explosive email and you're in a situation like at an institution like Harvard, you have to expect that the email is getting leaked.

20:44So you better be on your game, be on your pees and cues and say exactly what you want to say in that email. The effect was completely foreseeable. Airbrush from the history are the many Harvard luminaries who participated in and encouraged the ongoing relationship with Epstein after 2008. Left standing alone is Noak, PD's academic director who is now to be disciplined and disciplined is in quotes. He's not wrong. Noak, well, should be why he should be disciplined and he should be in big trouble for all of this and like I said, loses job in my opinion. All of these other people need to lose their jobs too. What's protecting them? That they're a trustee, that they're so called part of the elite? I'm not far ready with these people. And thus, we, the community, are allowed a comfortable view that Drew Fost got it right in 2008 and the university followed her lead even if a very few among us apparently didn't get the memo.

21:54So, kind of a cover, right, for Harvard here with that statement. Oh, it's not the whole institution. We got it right with what Fost said, but there are still some. Yes, that doesn't cut it with me. Sorry, everybody who was around, let me be very clear. Everybody who was around, who was involved when Epstein donated that money? They all need to be fired. Yet this framing is absurd, and its lie is revealed in the thinnest of the charges against Martin Noak, because Noak has not been punished for associating with Epstein. How could he be when so many others from Harvard, much more famous and prominent, had associated with Epstein as well? And again, it comes back to for me anyway. This is a Harvard problem, folks. Something stinks of that university. And I wouldn't spend one red cent to send my child there, not one cent.

23:00It is absurd what occurred in those alleged hallowed halls. Neither has he been punished because he asked Epstein to help him address PED's funding needs by securing donations from Epstein's friend Leon Black. How could he be when Harvard's development office itself asked Noak to ask Epstein for help? And there's the rub of it, right? And he gets to the heart of the issue in my opinion, and that is everybody who is there, everybody involved, all of these people that are hitting us with virtuous signaling, okay? The virtue signaling has to stop by these people. Somebody has to take responsibility for what occurred. You're all making big bucks, and with that big money comes big responsibility, or it should... Rather, Noak is being disciplined because of offenses that are plenty not offenses at all, or that when committed, we're not viewed as anything more than simple mistakes.

24:11The most extraordinary of these is the charge and faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Claudine Gay's notification to Noak, which states that he exhibited profound negligence in misrepresenting the source of PED's matching funds to one of his funding sources, the Templeton Foundation. This is a gross misrepresentation in itself. Yeah, I agree. Not a big fan of Claudine Gay or the way she handled this, and to make Noak the scapegoat and the only one really getting punished is laughable, considering we know the relationship somebody like Larry Summers had with Jeffrey Epstein. If they were to sanction everybody at Harvard who had a relationship with Epstein, those would be some empty ass halls, folks. The May Report had speculated this might have happened, but Noak's emails with the Templeton Foundation reveal that the precise words used to report his funding were actually requested by the Foundation.

25:16The Templeton Foundation was neither confused or misled, meaning there could be no misrepresentation, so they knew nothing was misrepresented to them, they knew exactly what they were getting into, they knew what the money was for, and they knew where the money originated, they did not care. And that's really what it comes down to, that's what it boils down to. The balance is just as weak. From the very start, Harvard knew Epstein treated PED as a second office. According to the May 2020 report, Harvard knew as early as 2006 that Epstein even had his own phone, so again, Epstein is set up, got this office, Larry Summers sets that up, got himself a phone line, he's missed a big shit on the campus of Harvard now. Yeah, I'm Jeffrey Epstein, burr, college dropout, dropout here, dropout there, but got myself a fellowship at Harvard.

26:18What an absolute joke, and what disrespect to the people who actually work hard for those fellowships. According to Noak, Summers walked with Epstein as he secured access to PED's offices with his own key card. Not once did he, or the universities say that this access was wrong, or must end. But now Noak is to be disciplined, in part because PED gave Epstein a different key card after the Harvard access system had changed. So even after they changed the system, even after they updated the locks, they had to make sure their boy Epstein was taking care of, right? They had to make sure their golden ticket was taken care of, they had to make sure. Jeffrey was all right. Sure, I guess one could say that a university-wide change in security protocols was meant to signal to PED that it should stop granting Epstein access to the PED offices.

27:25But wouldn't a memo from the administration have been a clearer and cheaper way to send that message? Well, they got money to burn there, obviously. I mean, with the insane amount of money they charge the students, every single toilet bowl should be gold plated. They should all be eating five star meals every night in the commissary. And, you know, whatever the top Egyptian count sheets are, they got to have those. This is Harvard, after all! Finally, Noak is to be disciplined because the center allowed Epstein's biography to appear on PED's webpage after Epstein's publicist requested it. Of course, the story of center benefactors commonly appear on center web pages. Of course, they do. That's part of it, right? What do you think these guys don't add all of this money and they don't get anything on the flip-back?

28:25Of course, they do. But during a period in which Harvard was inviting Jeffrey Epstein to the launch of its capital campaign and the most elite of the elite at Harvard were regularly meeting with Epstein at PED and around Cambridge. FAS blames Noak for failing to recognize that it was a misuse of the Harvard.edu domain to reveal Epstein as a friend of PED. Wasn't wrong to take his money, okay? Wasn't wrong to use him as a benefactor. Wasn't wrong to give him an office. But it was wrong to let everybody know that. All about saving face. It's never about the people who were affected. It's never about the girls who were abused or anything like that. You would think with as much involvement people from Harvard have that they'd start their own sort of program here where they'd offer free courses to these gals.

29:25None of these offenses would have even been noticed but for Harvard's need to appear vigilant, if only against one of the very many who continued to engage Epstein at Harvard after 2008. That one, it's scapegoat. It was wrong for Harvard to continue any association with Epstein after 2008. No one should be forced to live or work in an environment that celebrates in any way a man who crossed this critical line. Or a woman at that for that matter. Let's be very clear. 38% of people who are engaging in trafficking are women. Alright, we went through that report already. But the point stands. Nobody should feel uncomfortable at work. Nobody should feel uncomfortable at school. And this environment, I'll tell you what, not an environment I'd want my people in, that's for sure. Sex abuse is permanent. Its survivors carry its costs forever. All of them are entitled, at the very least, to an environment that does not trigger retraumatization.

30:31To have suffered from the likes of an Epstein and then see Harvard's most elite. Most elite, hanging with Epstein, is to add injury to insult. And that is a fact. That is definitely a fact. And it's no different. Let's be very clear. With Kamala Harris hanging out with Bill Clinton. We have to be consistent here, right? None of these dudes should be given air to breathe if they're involved in this sort of thing. And this wrong is about much more than funding. It's about the continuing relationship with so many at Harvard. Our accounting for that is wildly incomplete. And it betrays the truth. And a commitment to institutional integrity to allow Harvard to stand as innocent while one faculty member went rogue. And I, look, I couldn't agree more with what he's saying here folks. I think that no act needs to be disciplined, needs to be punished, but everybody does. I just want to drive that point home.

31:39The story of chapter 2 at Harvard is not the story of one bad apple. It is of an institution blinded by what? Money? Brilliance? Celebrity? From what seems to us now as an obvious moral truth. Of course, we were right not to take Epstein's money after 2008. But we were deeply wrong to continue to celebrate him at Harvard. In all the ways that so many of the most prominent among us did. That is the powerful. And he's calling to account all of his colleagues on campus who took part in refurbishing this guy's image and helping him have this access. That wrong is not excused or hidden with escape goat. We need an honest accounting of that past and a plan for how Harvard will avoid this failure in the future. Should all criminals be banished always? Should particular criminals, those whose crimes particularly affect members of the Harvard community, be banished always?

32:47And by always, I don't mean for any purpose. An event at which a criminal was asked to reflect on at least some crimes or even offer his justification could be different. At least if properly framed from a workshop in which the criminal is just one more participant celebrated only or especially because he happens to be rich. These are hard questions, no doubt, especially in an age of tweet length attention spans. Boy, can I get a clap from the back of the room there? That is exactly the age we're in. The attention span of a tweet. But it betrays our tradition to hide from these more complicated questions simply because some might misunderstand. We are a university that openly and eagerly engaged with a child sex predator, not just before he was convicted, but long after. How did our culture allow this to happen? And how can we now allow this failure to be obscured by scapegoating just one?

33:50Yes, Harvard's virtue has been signaled to anyone blind to what actually happened right here among us. But the vice of what happened, the open and regular engagement with a sex offender, has not been reckoned here. It is that which Harvard must finally account for, openly, fairly, and honestly. Well, folks, there you have it. Somebody, finally, connected to Harvard, somebody with a serious voice on campus, calling his colleagues to account. If you'd like to contact me, you can do that at Bobbi Kapuchi at protonmail.com. That's B-O-B-B-Y-C-A-P-U-C-C-I at protonmail.com. Also, find me on Twitter at Bobbi underscore C-A-P-U-C-C-I.

34:53All of the links that go with this episode can be found in the description box.