Bard College president resigns in wake of Epstein inquiry

Leon Botstein, who has been Bard College’s president for more than half a century, announced his retirement last Thursday (30 April), the same day a summary of a report by law firm WilmerHale found he had “minimised” and was not “fully accurate” in describing his relationship with child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in statements to the public and the Bard community.

The WilmerHale summary said while nothing that Botstein did in connection with his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein was illegal, Botstein made decisions in the course of that relationship “that reflect on his leadership of Bard”.

According to the summary, in 2012, when Botstein “decid[ed] to pursue Epstein” (in the hope of securing donations from the financier for Bard), Botstein was presented with “information regarding Epstein’s crimes to which he plead guilty in 2008” and that he was a New York State Level 3 Sex Offender (the state’s highest level), deemed “a high risk of re-offending”.

“Against the background of Epstein’s conviction, President Botstein’s contacts with Epstein, over the period 2012 to 2019, could have alerted President Botstein to the possibility that he and Bard would be facilitating Epstein’s continued abuse of women, legitimising Epstein, or exposing Bard students to a person like Epstein,” the summary states.

Earlier this year, the release of 3.5 million documents (the Epstein files) by the United States Department of Justice indicated the scope of Epstein’s web, which included sexual abuse of as many as a thousand young women and girls before he was arrested in 2010. Epstein died by suicide in a New York prison in August 2019.

Bard’s Board of Trustees commissioned the WilmerHale review of Botstein’s relationship with Epstein on 19 February after the release of the 3.5 million documents in the Epstein Files showed, as University World News reported on 13 March 2016, that Botstein’s dealings with Epstein were significantly greater than Botstein had indicated.

For instance, Botstein wrote to the Bard Community this past February, saying: “My interactions with Epstein were always and only for the sole purpose of soliciting donations for the College. Mr Epstein was not my friend.”

Yet, in a long email written on 25 May 2013 that discussed many things, including classical music, Botstein told Epstein, “I greatly cherish this new friendship, and I have real admiration for how you go about doing things.”

In an email sent to the Bard Community supplied to University World News by the Bard Office of Communications, the executive committee of the board of trustees wrote it had received the WilmerHale report (and provided a link to it), while speaking in vague terms about the findings vis-à-vis Epstein.

The email said: “[The] College is committed to strengthening its policies on donor vetting, fundraising and conflicts of interest.”

While the email thanked “those who came forward to share their perspectives”, the executive committee did not directly address an issue that students who had been calling for Botstein’s resignation raised in protests and with this correspondent: what they see as Bard’s complacent attitude toward sexual misconduct on campus, examples of which were discussed in the 13 March article by University World News.

Botstein’s announcement of his retirement (effective 30 June) in the wake of the Epstein Files makes him the only sitting college president thus far to have been forced out of office by the Epstein scandal.

Revelations about his relationship with Epstein forced Larry Sommers, Harvard University’s president from 2001 to 2006, to resign from various positions at Harvard and from teaching there. Dozens of other academics, including famed linguist and political commentator Noam Chomsky, have also seen their reputations tarnished by the revelations of their visits to Epstein’s private island, New York mansion and New Mexico ranch.

‘More honest than expected’

According to Bard student Owen Denker, a member of the ad hoc group, Take Back Bard, he and the students he has spoken with are not “surprised” by the WilmerHale report’s findings, although he said they were “not anticipating the report to be as honest or as transparent” as it was.

The administration of the liberal arts college had a “history of having ties” to any third party brought in to settle university matters, he said. “This was an exception, and we are very, very glad to see everything stated so plainly,” said Denker, who will be graduating in a few weeks.

For example, the report summary states that despite Epstein’s conviction for sexual assault in 2011 – a year before their first contact – Botstein’s contacts with Epstein “included approximately 25 visits to Epstein’s townhouse, a two-day visit to Epstein’s Little St James Island and a flight to the island with one such woman (along with [the financier] Leon Black’s family”.

Additionally, the summary cites “two visits by Epstein to Bard and to various concerts and recitals accompanied by multiple women who have since been identified as victims of Epstein, and multiple requests that President Botstein help such women – in the form of invitations to concerts, rehearsals, visits with the women and their parents, advice on their musical careers, etcetera”.

The summary also sstated that had “invitations extended to Epstein [by Botstein] – to stay at a Bard guest house, to attend a concert by conservatory students, to visit a Bard High School Early College [– been accepted],” Bard students “could have [been] further exposed . . . to Epstein”.

The summary does not state whether Botstein knew that Epstein’s conviction of one count of solicitation of sex with a minor was the result of a plea bargain.

It does say that against the advice of a senior professor, Botstein “relied on his view that a person convicted of crimes involving sex with a minor – ‘an ordinary sex offender’ – in his words, could be presumed to be rehabilitated in the same way that any other convicted person should be”.

The summary reports that Botstein “did not perceive the women around Epstein as raising concerns about Epstein’s conduct. Nor did he recognise the implications of doing favours for Epstein’s young women associates and their parents, including that he could be vouching for Epstein with them.

“President Botstein was adamant that he did not see the young women who surrounded Epstein or those he was asked to help as possible victims, given how busy he is and how often he is asked to help people in the course of his busy schedule”.

Questionable financial activities

WilmerHale’s summary also lays out a number of questionable financial activities by Botstein who, as he states in his letter of resignation, raised “nearly US$3 billion of philanthropy from numerous sources” and, early this year, announced the completion of “a US$1 billion endowment campaign begun in 2020 as a result of the generous challenge grant by the Open Society Foundations” founded by George Soros.

According to the summary, “President Botstein did not discuss with the Board whether to accept donations from Epstein or whether President Botstein could appropriately accept payments from Epstein.”

The summary also notes that in 2016, “President Botstein accepted fees under a consulting agreement with an Epstein entity” but “did not disclose this agreement to the Board on the grounds that he intended to donate those funds to Bard.”

According to WilmerHale: “He explains that those funds were donated to Bard by rolling them into his and-or his wife’s contributions over the years and were not separately identified as coming from Epstein.

“For this reason the documents cannot confirm for the Board the contribution of those fees to Bard.”

Student protection ‘inadequate’

Both Denker and Jasper Lavan, a sociology student who will have completed his sophomore year in a few weeks, emphasised that while the report is welcome, they see it only as the beginning of needed reforms in regard to Bard’s handling of sexual assault allegations on campus and the school’s internal democracy.

“I think it’s a good step for the future of the college, separating ourselves from these ties to Epstein,” Lavan noted. But, he stressed: “The sentiment I have heard again and again on campus is that the structure we have in place to protect students against sexual assault is inadequate and is directly harmful. The Title IX office [which oversees the federal regulations against sexual assault] feels unapproachable.”

Further, Lavan said: “It is an open secret that there are faculty here who sleep with students, that you just have to be careful … ‘don’t take that course; don’t engage with professors at certain hours’ … These stories are so widespread at this college and everyone knows but doesn’t want to talk about it,” he said.

Lavan told University World News the administration looks the other way when this stuff happens: “And that needs to change.”

For his part, Denker referred to the way the administration handles sexual misconduct as "absurd" and “negligent”.

A female student in Bard’s conservatory who agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity for the University World News article published on 13 May went even further saying: “It was my understanding from the beginning, and I actually remember this being the way Leon [Botstein is universally called by his first name] described it, that the report would include suggestions from WilmerHale for changes.

“None of those suggestions were publicised, so I am curious about what changes will be made,” she said.

This student also said she does not believe that the board of trustees understands the impact that Botstein’s relationship with Epstein had on herself as a female student and other female students.

“What’s important for the board to know is that they couldn’t imagine the impact of the revelation of Botstein’s relationship with Epstein. It is so deeply personal, and it ranges from people who were involved with Epstein [that is, had interactions with him on campus] to people like me who were in class with Leon and experienced his patronising learning environment,” which she also characterised as “patriarchal”.

“It would take a lot of very active measures from the board of trustees to even get near actual accountability for the role Leon and Bard have played in the experiences of women on campus related to the fact that Leon was associated with him [Epstein] at all,” she said.

‘Democratic deficit’ on campus

The school presents itself as a beacon of democratic thought through programmes such as the Bard Prison Initiative (BPI, which allows incarcerated individuals to study for a Bard bachelor degree); its early colleges designed to provide a path for students from economically and racially marginalised communities to go to college; programmes for refugees and campuses overseas – not to mention Botstein’s essays defending liberal education.

However, Lavan accused Bard of being hypocritical in its attitude toward democracy on campus.

“We have the Center for Civic Engagement encouraging people to vote in elections in Red Hook [the township in which Bard is located] for school board, even though we don’t have kids that go to these schools.

“But we don’t vote on the policies of our actual school.

“There are schools that have voting members on the board of trustees that have real power in making the policies that are implemented.

“So while Bard does talk about democracy outside the school, while the school does research about democracy, when it’s related to Bard, when it comes to engaging the students in the college, there are not enough efforts.”

For her part, the female student who spoke on condition of anonymity told University World News that the episode had taught her “that even in institutions, especially institutions that have ‘saviour complexes’, and even if part of their programming does good, there are still power dynamics.

“The hard thing about Bard is that because we’re liberal on the outside, they [the administration] have a very unique ability to sweep under the rug the patriarchal patterns – like being involved with Jeffrey Epstein.”

Bard is ‘more than Botstein’

Botstein’s tenure has seen the college grow from about 700 to 1,900 students on its bucolic main campus a hundred miles north of New York City on the eastern banks of the Hudson River.

Through its other academic units, such as the BPI and the hosting, on its main campus, of 100 refugee students from Afghanistan, Ukraine, South Sudan and other countries, the college educates some 10,000 students, 6,500 of which are pursuing bachelor, masters or PhDs and 12% of which are “displaced students”.

Lavan said that while he has heard concerns about whether Bard will continue these activities, he made the same point as Dr Jonathan Becker, Bard’s executive vice-president and director of the Center for Civic Engagement, in his article headlined, “Bard is an ecosystem, not a person”, published on 20 April, that Becker directed me to when I contacted him for an interview.

“There are a lot more people involved in making these programmes a reality than just Botstein,” said Lavan. “This is known by the students, the faculty and staff. So, whether there are extraneous factors that lead to any of these programmes ending, that fact is that Bard is not Botstein. And we have a billion dollar endowment and these programmes are not going away anytime soon.”

Becker, Lavan and Denker all noted that irrespective of Botstein’s involvement with Epstein, Botstein’s tenure as Bard’s president was coming to a close because he is now nearly 80 years old. Becker underscored that while Botstein oversaw Bard’s growth, it is “not the work of a single individual”.

Rather, it is “an interconnected network of vibrant sub-ecosystems, comprising affiliated and partner institutions, and the faculty and people who populate them”, Becker wrote.

Becker himself teaches a course in civic engagement that includes students who meet with him in the seminar room and others from countries around the world. Political science professor Simon Gilhooley’s course on voting rights included students from three Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) who joined by Zoom.

A post-Botstein Bard, Becker is sure, will continue its institutional mission to extend “liberal arts and sciences education to communities in which it has been underdeveloped, inaccessible or absent”.

It will also remain a home for talented faculty, which includes, he wrote in an email to University World News, the highest (per capita) number of “Guggenheims, MacArthur ‘genius’ awards, and Pulitzer Prizes, not to mention Tonys and Grammys”.

Fundraising pressures

Both Denker and Lavan are critical of the board’s decision to allow Botstein to continue to teach at the college and to move from the president’s house to another owned by the college across a small highway.

As Botstein said in his resignation letter: “I will continue with the Bard Music Festival, SummerScape, and the Bard Conservatory and will live at Finberg House.”

The anonymous female student who spoke to University World News said that “considering what was publicised, just in the [WilmerHale] summary, and what has to be much more detailed in the full investigation, the fact that he’s still going to be in a student-embedded role is absurd”.

The decision “doesn’t hear the report at all,” she said.

The students say they want a say in who will be the next permanent president of Bard – whoever that will be. For Botstein, fundraising and networking were clearly primary functions of the role of college presidents and ones that he excelled at.

The WilmerHale summary notes that in explaining his actions regarding Epstein, Botstein argued “forcefully . . . that Bard’s need for funds” – much of which was used for financial aid to offset the college’s steep tuition so that students from financially straitened backgrounds could attend Bard – was “paramount”.

The summary also quotes Botstein striking a Churchillian rhetorical pose dating from the days after Germany invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, when Britain was allying itself to the same communist country: “If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons.”

Botstein is reported as saying: “I would take money from Satan if it permitted me to do God’s work.”

Disclosure: The author of this article was a freshman at Bard in 1976 and is a member of the class of 1980.