College campuses are in turmoil over faculty ties to Epstein

Many Jeffrey Epstein’s connections to universities and prominent academics, which he maintained through financial donations and lavish gifts, have been well-known since his 2019 arrest and suicide in a Manhattan jail cell. And after the US Department of Justice released three million new documents related to the criminal investigation into the late sex trafficker last month, it became clear that his influence in higher education was far more extensive.

As a result of the email exchanges included in this new set of files, many professors and university administrators found themselves publicly associated with Epstein for the first time, and were caught in a maelstrom of angry students, alumni and colleagues.

Merely appearing in the files does not mean a person is involved in any alleged crime, but the turmoil caused by these interactions has touched all types of campuses, from small arts schools to major public universities and the Ivy League. Faculty members who had cultivated relationships with Epstein, who were suddenly called to account, largely insisted that they saw him as a wealthy donor who would only fuel further debate about the financial ethics of American academia.

At the School of Visual Arts in New York, for example, fliers declaring “One of Your Teachers Is in the Files” and “SVA Doesn’t Want Ties with Epstein” appeared on campus bulletin boards in the wake of the Justice Department’s latest release. The posters displayed emails between Epstein and David A. Ross, head of the school’s MFA Art Practice program and former director of several contemporary art museums, as of October 2009, more than a year after Epstein pleaded guilty in Florida to charges of soliciting prostitution and procuring minors to engage in prostitution. In one of those exchanges, Epstein floated the idea of ​​an art exhibition called “Legal,” featuring “girls and boys between the ages of 14 and 25… where they don’t look like their real age.” Epstein further explained, “Some people go to prison because they can’t tell their true age. Controversial… Interesting.” “You’re unbelievable,” Ross replied. “That would be so great.” [sic] And a terrible book.

The poster campaign was how some on campus first learned about Ross’s Epstein connection. One current SVA student, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of actions the school might take against them, said they only learned there were Russians in Epstein’s files when they saw the posts. (This person also shared photos of two different posts about Ross with WIRED.) “I’d like to see [the school administration] They say: “Check out all the heads of the State Department.”

Another current SVA student who also requested anonymity due to his employment by the school told WIRED that campus security removed some posts related to Ross. They say: “I am a working student, and my manager was asking my co-workers to remove posts to avoid getting into trouble with management.” This didn’t necessarily stop the gossip around the school. (SVA did not respond to a question about whether campus employees had been directed to remove labels related to emails Ross sent with Epstein.)

This student does not consider the Epstein-Ross correspondence a scandal specific to the SVA but rather “a symbol of things that are wrong with the art world and higher education as a whole,” both of which are “saturated with people with money and connections.” They believe that “the true extent of… [Epstein’s] “The impact is much greater than what we can read in the files.”

Ross resigned from his position at SVA on February 3, saying in a statement to The New York Times that he met Epstein in the 1990s as director of the Whitney Museum of American Art. “I knew him as a wealthy patron and collector, and part of my job was to befriend people who had the ability and interest in supporting the museum,” he wrote. Ross explained that he believed Epstein’s account of his Florida conviction was a “political framing.” When Epstein was again under investigation, this time for sex trafficking of minors, Ross reached out to support him, which he described in his statement as a “huge error in judgement,” saying he later felt “ashamed that I fell for his lies.”