Jeffrey Epstein, philanthropist

I gave at the office....

The Wall Street Journal recently went through a new trove of previously unreleased documents related to Jeffrey Epstein’s social calendar. The Journal has their article behind the paywall, but here is a summary of the discoveries the Journal made.

Leon Botstein, President of Bard College was shown to have met with Epstein two dozen times in four years. I don’t see my family that often! When asked why he met with a man who had been convicted of sexual Botstein pointed to Bard’s prison education to support his assertion that Bard believes in rehabilitation. Hilarious. Twenty four meetings later (that’s A LOT of MEETINGS), Botstein has raised 0 dollars from the billionaire, but he’s made a friend?

Epstein was more enthusiastic about donating money to Harvard or MIT. What a diss.

There are plenty of other people comprised by the new Epstein documents, among them Ehud Barak, former Israeli Prime Minister, Kathryn Ruemmler former Barack Obama White House counselor and now top lawyer at Goldman Sachs. Ruemmler palled around with Epstein at his notorious Virgin Islands estate.

MIT Media Lab was a beneficiary of Epstein’s largesse. Joi Ito, entrepreneur and disgraced former director of the gold standard of innovation and creativity in engineering and design penned an apology about taking Epstein money the for Media Lab and for his own ventures.

Universities and colleges beg rich people for money to imitate the MIT Media Lab. Donors hoping to capitalize on some break through in these innovation spaces shower engineering departments with good graphic in donor cash. Ito was king of this ‘space’ when the Epstein were flowing.

Epstein’s overactive social schedule revealed a desperation that less sexually obsessed billionaires abjured. As a sex offender, he needed thick philanthropic cover for his activities. He knew it was good business to give money to the most prestigious institutions he could find in US News and Report University and College Rankings.

I have no real comment about Noam Chomsky: I don’t know what to say. Chomsky is a film buff?

There is a lesson here somewhere, and it has to do with the capitalism, capital and the structural corruption of the contemporary University, but I’m too tired to figure out what it might be.