When I was a student at Arizona State University almost 15 years ago, I helped film a massive event on campus known as the Origins Symposium, a science-focused discussion series led by the well-known physicist Lawrence Krauss and attended by thousands.
Years later, I’d come to see Krauss’ name all over the Jeffrey Epstein files, in emails showing that he maintained ties to Epstein several years after the latter pleaded guilty to sex crimes. For me, that revelation showed the extent of Epstein’s ties to academia and how he used them to maintain influence when he should have been a pariah.
And the fallout in academia over the Epstein files continues. As The New York Times reported earlier this week, some of the recently released files show how Epstein pulled strings behind the scenes in 2012 to get his then-girlfriend admitted to Columbia University’s dental school after she’d been rejected. (The revelation raises fresh questions for me about the creepy dentist’s chair Epstein had on his private island.)
Columbia University fessed up to the special treatment in a statement on Wednesday:
In short, a student was admitted to the dental school through an irregular process, coinciding with fundraising solicitations by former academic and alumni leadership of the school. The fundraising discussions were undertaken by the then leadership of the dental school or individuals acting at their behest and not at the direction of the leadership of the medical center or the University. To be clear: the matters discussed in these communications do not meet Columbia’s standards for integrity and independence in admissions.
Columbia isn’t the only university coming to terms with its ties to Epstein. The outlet Inside Higher Ed, for example, listed nine professors and faculty members whose ties to Epstein prompted recent statements from several universities, including Harvard and Yale.
At Ohio State University, a professor was put on leave for wrestling a documentary filmmaker to the ground after the filmmaker sought to ask the university’s former president about OSU’s Epstein connections. The former president, a man named E. Gordon Gee, recently decried efforts to remove billionaire Les Wexner’s name from university buildings because of his close relationship with Epstein — efforts Gee called “cancel culture.”
Needless to say, the revelations from the Epstein files are sending tremors throughout college and university campuses.
