Harvard Punishes Prof Who Had Ties to Jeffrey Epstein
“had close ties with Jeffrey Epstein and is accused of giving the disgraced financier an office on campus”
This is just a reminder that Jeffrey Epstein had friends in high places all over the country.
The Associated Press reports via CBS News in Boston:
Harvard University Punishes Professor Who Had Ties To Jeffrey Epstein
A Harvard University professor who had close ties with Jeffrey Epstein and is accused of giving the disgraced financier an office on campus will be barred from starting new research or advising students for at least two years, the school announced Thursday.
Martin Nowak will be allowed to continue teaching during that period, but other contact with students will be limited and his research center is being shut down, according to a memo from Claudine Gay, dean of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
Nowak, a math professor, was placed on paid leave after a May 2020 review found that he violated school security rules by giving Epstein “unrestricted” access to campus. The review found that Nowak gave Epstein an office in Nowak’s campus research center, along with a building key card, and allowed Epstein to visit even after the financier’s 2008 sex crimes conviction.
The review also found that Nowak devoted a page to Epstein on the center’s website and included links to the financier’s websites, both at the request of Epstein’s publicist. Epstein had no formal affiliation with Harvard at the time but had previously donated $6.5 million to help start Nowak’s Program for Evolutionary Dynamics.
In a statement on Friday, Nowak said he is “humbled to be able to return to my work at Harvard and immerse myself once again in this most remarkable of academic communities.”
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Comments
On the one hand, universities put a lot of pressure on senior faculty to find funding for their programs and research. On the other hand, universities need to demonstrate that they carefully guard against sex offenders having access to campus. So, Harvard does not have your back. It is not as if Harvard declared Epstein persona-non-grata, and the Professor provided Epstein access after being told not to do so. Harvard really does not have the faculty’s back. Heads Harvard wins, tails, faculty lose.
Still waiting for MIT President Rafael Reif to undergo any remotely similar penalty for personally approving Epstein contributions to MIT after Epstein was already on their list of disapproved donors. The particular theory of greed applied in that case was that if Epstein’s name was scrubbed from the “anonymous” donation, propriety was preserved. When the scandal broke, Reif immediately hired (note that well) an “independent” legal team to absolve him of all immorality, which of course they did. He did, of course, make sure to visibly punish scapegoat subordinates whose departments benefited from the dirty money.
Reif is still in office and pandering to the wokesters, most recently on the day after the massage parlor murders, in a message to alumni breathlessly “express[ing] the outrage and solidarity of our community against these terrible acts… a terrible surge in anti-Asian violence, discrimination and public rhetoric… in the context of several years of mounting hostility and suspicion in the United States focused on people of Chinese origin.”
I’m sure the irony that this crime (like Epstein’s) was entirely attributable to an unhealthy preoccupation with sex was entirely lost on him.
As I recall, the lawyers hired by Reif actually did find he had taken Epstein money that he (yes, Reif himself) had not disclosed! I may “circle back” and look for the docs on this later; I am pretty sure of it.
And there was a sort of perfunctory explanation, and that was it. No questioning among administration or the MIT Corporation, as far as I know, of whether Reif should be fired.