Epstein files give glimpse into dark side of Bard College
The global fallout from the release of the 3.5 million documents in the Epstein Files includes: the arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor (formerly Prince Andrew); the arrest of Lord Peter Mandelson; the resignation of World Economic Forum president Børge Brende; the questioning under oath of both former US president Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary, the former US secretary of state; and the tarnishing of the reputations of dozens of academics, including a former Harvard University president, Larry Summers; a leading cognitive scientist, Noam Chomsky; and one sitting college president, Leon Botstein.
Last month Bard College’s board of trustees announced it had hired law firm WilmerHale to conduct an independent investigation into communications, financial contributions and related matters between Epstein and Botstein, who has been president of Bard College for more than half a century.
No one alleges that Botstein was involved in Epstein’s trafficking of over a thousand minor girls and his sexual crimes.
Yet, Botstein’s eight-year-long email and in-person relationship that began in 2011, three years after Epstein was convicted of soliciting a minor for prostitution in Florida and after Epstein made an unsolicited donation of US$75,000 to Bard High School Early College (BHSEC), has raised concerns.
“Jeffrey Epstein was a convicted sex offender at the time Bard accepted his gifts and maintained contact with him,” Ambra Hunter, the mother of a student enrolled in one of Bard’s early-college programmes, wrote in an email to Botstein in February, The New York Times reported.
“Your position as president of a prestigious college helped launder his reputation through association, signalling to students, faculty, donors and the broader public that he remained an acceptable participant in academic life,” she wrote.
The revelation of his relationship with Epstein has undercut faith in the man who over five decades grew the college from about 700 students to 2,500 today, raised US$2.3 billion over that period, and developed the college into a major player in reformed high school education, providing college education to incarcerated individuals, and forging meaningful international partnerships.
As “deplorable” as students like Grace Charles, a sophomore studying classics, find Botstein’s relationship with Epstein to have been, she and others told University World News the revelations are a symptom of Bard’s darker side, which stands in stark contrast to its reputation as the nation’s most liberal college and Botstein’s reputation as a stalwart defender of liberalism.
“It’s not only the ongoing situation with Jeffrey Epstein,” affirmed another student, Owen Denker, who is studying sociology and is a media liaison person for the newly formed Concerned Students of Bard. “This has brought to light Bard’s broader culture that we talk about in hushed tones and is an open secret.
“It’s finally coming to light that [there have] been sexually inappropriate relationships between professors and students, that sexual harassment goes uninvestigated and, if you look into Bard’s history, rape,” he said.
A student who feared retaliation and to whom University World News has granted anonymity characterised Bard’s administration as an “old boys’ network” that shields sexual abusers.
Reputation laundering
Members of the concerned students’ group and other students have attended several demonstrations calling for Botstein’s resignation.
However, not everyone is concerned in the same way. Denker said there was a minority of students on the campus who continued to support Botstein. One student who spoke to The Guardian was in this camp: “Putting Bard in a transitional period, or a presidential search, would only hurt the more vulnerable parts of the institution,” she said.
University World News reached out to Bard College with a number of questions, including about legal cases brought against the college by a former student and former professor.
While privacy protocols prevent the college from commenting on the cases, and the college did not respond to other questions, a Bard College spokesperson did provide a statement: “Bard College’s Gender-Based Misconduct Policy underscores our commitment to protecting our community.
“It goes beyond the legal requirements by protecting students both on and off campus, having additional prohibitions against sexual exploitation and forms of sex-based harassment not covered by current Title IX [the federal law that bans sex-based discrimination by colleges and universities] regulations. The College reviews and revises its policies and procedures annually to ensure that they are meeting the needs of the community.
“The College has never been found liable for failure to uphold Title IX laws, and OCR [the Office of Civil Rights in the Department of Education] has never found Bard to be in violation of Title IX.”
As far back as the early 1970s, Bard had a famously outré reputation, and relationships between staff and students were known to occur, even if not officially acknowledged. In 1990, faculty at Simon’s Rock, a Bard early college in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, were more concerned with punishing a group of 16 students who protested against professors’ sexual misconduct than with the misconduct itself.
In one instance, David S Clement, a 22-year-old male student, told The New York Times that a male professor “offered him a better grade if he responded favourably to sexual advances”, an offer Clement declined and prompted his turning to the 25-member self-styled Defense Guard, most of whom were women.
In groups of four to 12, 16 members of the Defense Guard approached four professors, presumably including the one who had propositioned Clement. In turn, each student said to the professor in question: “It has come to our attention that you have sexually harassed students on this campus. Sexual harassment is a crime and will not be tolerated. It will stop.”
The Defense Guard members said they “took matters into their own hands because they did not believe the college’s deans would act if complaints were filed”.
In response, 27 of the college’s 30 faculty voted to recommend the students’ suspension for their “outrageous violation of the principles of the college”.
The administration later reversed the faculty’s decision. Upon being reinstated, three members of the Defense Guard (one man and two women) filed formal charges of sexual harassment against three professors, which, The New York Times reported, prompted the dean of the college to open a formal investigation and the dean of students to revamp the sexual assault reporting policy “designed to make the complaint process easier for students”.
Botstein, in an interview with Harper’s Magazine that same year, called the students’ actions “theatrical” and “extremely reminiscent of fascism” and even Mao’s Red Guard.
He told the Harper’s reporter that when substantiated charges of a similar nature had been made in the past, the college had taken action. “But in these particular instances there had been no formal complaints made by the students involved and no evidence presented,” he said.
Botstein went on to tell Harpers, curiously, given that alleged sexual misconduct was the trigger for the protests: “There is always going to be some kind of libidinal component if we achieve the close teaching and mentoring to which we aspire – particularly using the so-called Socratic method. Either we own up to the sexual dimension and try to manage it or we have to change our ideal, teach with distance, impersonally, by television or in huge lecture halls.”
Student rape
In December 2015, writing in the school’s newspaper, the Bardvark (31 December, Vol 3, Issue 2), Lily Gordon (class of 2017)
reported the previous April that during an open house event “[t]hree students who were present during the discussion about sexual assault reported Botstein’s comment: ‘You have to use common sense. A girl drinking a bottle of vodka and then going to a party is as wise as me walking into a Nuremberg Rally while wearing the yellow badge’.”
Botstein, who is Jewish, lost family in the Holocaust.
Gordon also quoted Mark Primoff, then a Bard spokesperson, saying that Botstein’s quotes referencing the Nuremberg Rally were “gross distortions and bear no resemblance to his [Botstein’s] views on sexual assault”.
During this period, Bard’s handling of rape accusations prompted the student-led Bard Anti-Sexual Assault Initiative to file a Title IX complaint in December 2015 with the Department of Education, calling for the removal of Botstein from the Title IX process.
In January 2016, the HuffPost reported the department had opened an investigation of Bard itself for “initially prescrib[ing] counselling and ‘social probation’ as a punishment for sexual assault” in spite of Bard's own code of conduct that stated that students who violate the sexual assault policy would be punished with suspension, at a minimum.
The HuffPost reported that subsequently, Bard changed its policies, replacing a “minimum sanction with a range of possible punishments”.
‘Open secrets’
More recent sexual misconduct has also involved professors. In 2021, after a Title IX investigation, Bard fired Carlos Valdez, a percussion instructor, for sexually harassing Avalon Packer, a music student. In early May, Packer sued Bard because, according to The New York Times, “the instructor should not have been on staff because of prior harassment complaints that the school knew about.”
The 66-year-old Valdez was fired after Bard determined that Packer’s complaint that he “rub[bed] up against her while he had an erection during a lesson and later forcibly kissed her”, was credible.
A student with knowledge of the orchestra who has requested anonymity told University World News that there are stories shared by peers, making it an open secret that there was a male orchestra official getting drunk with students and sexting with them.
According to Denker: “students know that there are administrators and professors who are preying on students to this day. As students enter Bard, their classmates make them aware of which professors are known to ask students on dates, [and] which professors [they should] not be alone around”.
Botstein’s story
Notwithstanding Botstein’s claim that he was solely driven by the desire to secure donations for Bard from Epstein, many of the more than 2,600 times his name appears in emails and other documents show that their communications went beyond that remit.
A large number of these mentions are email threads. Others discuss dinner invitations: one dated 3 April 2013 in which the late Northwestern University professor of computing, Roger Schank, who was also an entrepreneur in the high-tech field, wrote: “there next week in case that matters (Botstein?)”, indicating that Botstein was among those academics who seemed to be thought of as baubles for Epstein’s table.
In an article published in The Wall Street Journal on 1 May 2023, Botstein reflected on his communications with Epstein, which apparently began in 2011. According to the newspaper, Botstein visited Epstein at his Manhattan mansion to thank him for a donation to BHSEC and to lay the groundwork for hoped-for future donations.
Epstein, who had served 13 months of an 18-month-long sentence for the 2008 conviction of soliciting a minor for prostitution, was classified at the time as a level three sex offender (the highest level) in New York State – a fact of which Botstein was aware, given that he told The Wall Street Journal: “We looked him up, and he was a convicted felon for a sex crime.” Referencing Bard’s large programme providing education to prisoners, he told his interviewer: “We believe in rehabilitation.”
This is undoubtedly true. The Bard Prison Initiative (BPI) is the largest college-education programme for incarcerated individuals in the nation. Since 1999, more than 750 incarcerated individuals have taken their bachelor’s degree through Bard-level courses taught in seven correctional institutions across New York State; there are presently 400 students in the programme.
At Epstein’s home, Botstein told the newspaper, they discussed classical music and other areas of mutual interest. “He presented himself as a billionaire, a really, really rich person,” said Botstein. “I found him odd and arrogant. And what I finally came to believe, which is why we stopped contact with him, is that he was simply stringing us along.”
Epstein made no more donations to Bard, Botstein told The Wall Street Journal. “It was a blessing in disguise,” he said, “that we never got any (more) money.”
Three days later, Botstein told The New York Times, “People don’t understand what this job is. You cannot pick and choose, because among the very rich is a higher percentage of unpleasant and not very attractive people. Capitalism is a rough system.”
“Would we accept money from Jeffrey Epstein today? No,” Botstein went on. Epstein was a “monster”, a “truly evil man”, he told The New York Times.
“We had no idea, the public record had no indication, that he was anything more than an ordinary – if you could say such a thing – sex offender who had been convicted and went to jail.”
“A guy sent us money, and we followed up. It’s a simple story.”
A new friendship
Except, as emails released in January by the US Department of Justice reveal, it wasn’t.
Despite Epstein being the highest-level sex offender, we now know (because of the United States Department of Justice’s (DoJ) release of millions of Epstein files and the DoJ’s partial release of the Epstein Files) that on 28 February 2013, Botstein wrote to Epstein asking: “Do you want instead to pop down to the Bard High School this afternoon? presumably referencing Bard’s high school in New York City; Epstein wasn’t free that afternoon.
Between 24 and 25 March 2013, Epstein and Botstein exchanged four emails, beginning with Epstein’s, which discusses whether or not forgotten classical music – of the type Botstein, as conductor of the American Symphony Orchestra, championed – is relevant today.
Botstein replied with a fairly long email the following day, which begins by saying he’d just returned home and wishing Epstein a “happy passover” (sic) and thanking Epstein for his “candor and friendship”.
Later in the email, Botstein writes: “I greatly cherish this new friendship, and I have real admiration for how you go about doing things”, sentiments Bard’s president apparently forgot last month when he wrote to the Bard Community, saying in part: “My interactions with Epstein were always and only for the sole purpose of soliciting donations for the College. Mr Epstein was not my friend.”
Botstein’s letter to the Bard Community also references the two parts of the email that discuss Vladimir Nabokov, which have raised eyebrows. Nabokov’s most famous work is Lolita, which tells the story of a middle-aged professor who becomes who obsessed with a 12-year-old girl he calls a “nymphet”, whom he kidnaps and rapes. Notoriously, Epstein’s private plane was called the Lolita Express.
In his letter to the Bard Community, Botstein explained that Epstein had asked him about Nabokov. “I published an essay in 2013 on Nabokov and Stravinsky,” was all he wrote.
The email to Epstein, in fact, goes further. It defends Botstein’s role in reclaiming forgotten classical pieces, for which, he underscores to Epstein, he’d received awards and even a Grammy nomination.
Botstein casts himself as a latter-day Nabokov, albeit when the Russian scholar was practising literary criticism. “[A]gain think of Nabokov, whose favourite Russian poets were often obscure figures derided by all the other critics.”
Towards the end of the email, having elevated Epstein as the grader of his “badly constructed mid-term”, Botstein continues: “I am a bit proud not to have gotten a top grade. True controversy rarely leads to praise in this [the arts] business. Nabokov became famous and admired only at the end.”
After a planned May 2013 visit by Epstein to Bard did not take place, Epstein eventually arrived by helicopter on 28 July, toured the campus and had lunch with Botstein.
Later that year, in an apparent reference to property owned by Epstein outside Santa Fe in New Mexico, known as Zorro Ranch, a redacted email from August 2013 says: “Leon Botstein wants to go to the ranch Aug.23/24...should I follow up on this with him?”
David Wade, Botstein’s spokesperson, told the Albany Times Union that Botstein had “never been to any ranch in New Mexico”.
On 12 March, New Mexico’s attorney general, Raúl Torrez, announced the state was reopening a criminal investigation into Jeffrey Epstein’s activities on the ranch.
On 4 January 2015, following a story in The Guardian two days earlier that laid out the links between (then) Prince Andrew and Epstein, Botstein wrote again to Epstein, again emphasising the “friendship” between the two men.
“When I sent you New Year's greetings, I was blissfully unaware of the resurgence of tabloid publicity. If there is anything I can do, let me know.
“True friendship, in my view, is among the most honourable and rare of virtues. And I value our friendship, so if there is any way I can be of help, let me know (not that royalty is quite up my proverbial alley). Stay well. Leon”, he stated.
The emails released by the DOJ show that Botstein and Epstein were more than epistolary pals.
As The New York Times reported on 17 May 2023, in 2016 Botstein earned US$150,000 in consulting fees from Gratitude America, a foundation set up by Epstein. Botstein told the paper’s Vimal Patel he was unaware of where the money came from because “the contract was signed by someone else” (that is, not Epstein).
Patel cited a Bard College statement that said the US$150,000 was part of Botstein’s “annual 2016 gift to Bard, along with personal savings and the rest of his non-Bard income from honoraria and outside conducting fees, a practice he has maintained for many years”.
In December 2018, seven months before Epstein was arrested for the second time, Botstein visited Little St James Island. An email thread confirms that Botstein travelled to Epstein’s private island with Leon Black, a billionaire financier and chairman of the board of the Museum of Modern Art, from whom Botstein was seeking a donation.
In his letter to the Bard Community, Botstein explained: “I flew with Mr and Mrs Black to the Virgin Islands on their private plane and had a fundraising dinner with their family on their boat;
“Mr Epstein was present for dinner. I became ill, stayed by myself, and took a commercial flight home. I thanked Mr Epstein for facilitating the engagement with the Blacks. This fundraising trip resulted in a $250,000 gift from Leon Black in support of the arts at Bard approximately 18 months later.”
In a statement to the Buffalo, New York radio station WAMC, a spokesperson for Botstein said: “This was nearly fourteen years ago. President Botstein came down with a severe flu on the trip, kept to himself after dinner, and isolated himself in a resort-style bungalow overnight.
“He doesn’t recall where the bungalow was located but remembers it was close enough to the airport to make a commercial flight home the next day.”
In Botstein’s email, he characterised Epstein as “a skilled manipulator, prodigious networker, and serial exaggerator”. He said it appeared that Epstein had used his association with Bard and other institutions to “burnish his image, although he never displayed generosity to the College commensurate with his claims of wealth”.
He continued: “When it became apparent that Mr Epstein was not going to become a major donor, our contact became more sporadic, but I always retained the warm tone of communication I use with donors and prospects.
“I was not following the revelatory closing chapter of Mr Epstein’s life and the extent of his crimes until he was arrested in 2019.
“I remain shocked and appalled at the horrific nature and extent of his monstrous and criminal depravity. I am deeply sorry to have involved myself and the College with him in any way.”
Two very different faces
Bard prides itself on being the most liberal college in the United States and socially engaged well beyond its bucolic campus on the east bank of the Hudson River – through its early colleges, the prison initiative, dual degree programmes with universities overseas and as an anchor for Central European University.
‘How’, I asked Denker and one of the other students who will remain anonymous, ‘do they square this view of Bard with what the legal record shows and with the Bard they attend?’
This student, who has friends in the orchestra, told University World News they were told that after Valdez was fired, Botstein came to the class and pointed to the Bard Prison Initiative to show that Bard believed in rehabilitation and redemption.
Clearly angry, the student told University World News: “I think in a really f**ked-up and twisted way, the liberalism of the college and the good things it does are used almost as a defence to not actually unpack the fucked-up culture of sexual misconduct and racism on campus.”
Denker also cast the college as Janus-faced.
“It has two very different faces,” said Denker. “There’s the progressive side; there’s no denying that our curriculum is extremely progressive and that our professors have been granted unparalleled academic freedom to explore progressive ideas – and that the prison initiative does quite a bit of good work and that we take in a number of refugee students.
“However, the college has a much darker side, the side of sexual misconduct, where an old boys’ club of professors and administrators are permitted to do as they wish.” Then, echoing what the other student had said about what Botstein told the orchestra, he said: “They use this progressive side as a sort of bludgeon against criticism.
“They argue: ‘How can we ever go after sexual misconduct and meaningfully address it if it may place the school in legal peril?’,” Denker, who is a senior, continued, obliquely referencing the present political context in the United States under President Donald J Trump.
“If President Botstein is forced to resign, we may not be able to take in refugee students. We may be subject to ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] raids.
“They use that and weaponise it against genuine criticism.”
As one of the students who requested anonymity put it, “People come here expecting there to be a more equitable culture, whether you are talking about women, people of colour, or refugees. It’s incredibly disheartening that it ultimately feels like anywhere else. Bard does good things externally that are liberal, but it has not unpacked its own structures of oppression.”
Charles, who believes Botstein should resign, casts her view of the paradox by zeroing in on her fellow students and on faculty members as individual actors: “People at Bard don’t feel they need to work on their biases or work on any prejudices … because they are at Bard.
“There’s a feeling that this is the most progressive place to be, and if you’ve made it here, that must be a reflection of your personality and the things you believe.”
Accordingly, “people don’t put their work into self-reflection, and, thus, there is a lot of microaggression, [and] a lot of prejudice on the campus that goes unchecked”.
Charles placed the paradox in a wider context: “Bard is the epitome of liberal education, but there’s racism in liberalism and its political constructs, and we find them at Bard and in the system of higher education in America.
“From where I stand [as a Black woman], it’s not anything out of the ordinary. It’s par for the course. If you want to be in higher education, you’re going to deal with people who are humanly terrible.”
Post-Botstein era
While the college waits for WilmerHale’s report about Botstein, Concerned Students of Bard are looking ahead to the post-Botstein era; Botstein turns 80 this December.
Students are concerned about whether Bard will remain a progressive institution, said Denker. “Students do not have faith in the board of trustees to install an effective leader that truly reflects students’ values.
“They believe that we would be stuck with someone far more conservative or someone concerned with cosying up to the federal government in a way that would fundamentally alter Bard’s intellectual life forever,” he said, acknowledging as he did, in reference to the prison initiative, that Botstein’s tenure has seen positive initiatives.
“We believe we have to have a say in who our next president is; that one cannot be appointed without our input,” he told University World News.
* University World News reached out to the Bard student government, which did not respond.
Disclosure: The author of this article was a freshman at Bard in 1976 and is a member of the class of 1980.