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Harvard's Ties To Epstein Go Far Beyond Larry Summers

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by blueapples
Thursday, Nov 20, 2025 - 13:00

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Since being founded as New College in 1636 with the dedicated focus of training Puritan clergymen, Harvard University has transformed itself into the center of the academic universe. How is it then that an institution of higher learning employing the brightest minds in the world with the effectively infinite resources that come with its endowment, larger than the gross domestic product of at least 100 countries, valued at nearly $57 billion, has been able to feign ignorance over the ties many of its most prominent figures have had with the notorious pedophile and human trafficker Jeffrey Epstein? While the school has recently distanced itself from former Clinton Treasury Secretary and university president Larry Summers in response to the fallout from his connections to Epstein resurfacing, that public relations tactic appears to be more of a performative exercise aimed at salvaging its faltering reputation than a genuine stance taken on moral principle, as even a cursory examination of other members of Harvard's faculty shows that the university's connections to Epstein run far deeper.

Epstein and known age of consent critic Alan Dershowitz.

Epstein's connections to Harvard were extensively chronicled following his alleged death in 2019, leading to then-president Lawrence Bacow commissioning a review of the university's ties to him just one month following his untimely demise. In May 2020, Harvard released a report detailing the findings of the review commissioned by Bacow in September 2019, which revealed that Epstein had donated approximately $9.1 million to Harvard between 1998 and 2007, a figure that pales in comparison to the true financial contributions he ostensibly made to the university upon further examination.

While admitting to some of its financial connection to Epstein, the university emphasized that it had not accepted donations from him following his 2008 convictions on state felony charges in Florida of solicitation of prostitution and solicitation of prostitution with a minor, which he received as part of a plea deal that included the infamous non-prosecution agreement tendered to him by the United States Department of Justice through then-US Attorney and future Trump Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta. Harvard adamantly declared it cut ties with Epstein after learning about what it characterized as his "repulsive and reprehensible" crimes, expressing its "profound regret" for any past association it had with the convicted sex offender. Yet, Harvard's assertion that it distanced itself from Epstein out of moral outrage over his depraved crimes is contradicted directly by university officials who admit that they first learned of his sexual offenses when criminal charges were first brought against him in 2006. Upon learning of the charges, Harvard officials spoke with Epstein directly, leading to an agreement in which he would end his visiting fellowship with the university within its department of psychology.

Despite Harvard deeming that the charges brought against Epstein were enough to make him unworthy of holding a fellowship, the university continued to accept donations from him. It was not until early 2008, when first-year Harvard President Drew G. Faust was asked to consider a donation from Epstein, that the university implemented its formal policy of no longer accepting gifts from him. Faust succeeded Larry Summers as Harvard's first female president less than one year earlier in 2007. The change in university policy of no longer accepting donations from Epstein not being made until Faust's presidency highlights how the disgraced pedophile's influence flourishing throughout Harvard was a direct byproduct of Summers' leadership. It wasn't until the 2020 report commissioned by Faust's successor, Lawrence Bacow, that the university would offer an iota of transparency into its association with Epstein nor a semblance of remorse for the impact it had. In an inept public relations attempt doubling as a hollow gesture of atonement, the university decided to donate a paltry $200,937 to groups dedicated to supporting victims of sex crimes, a sum it stated was the remaining total of the $9.1 million it had received in donations from Epstein between 1998 and 2007.

Posturing itself as a mea culpa attempting to come clean about the university's ties to Epstein, the report also revealed the depths to which his influence reached throughout the Harvard faculty. Although those revelations did less to assuage concern and did more to raise lingering questions about how entrenched he remained at the institution even after it supposedly cut off any direct ties with him by ending his fellowship and placing a moratorium on receiving donations from him. In a statement issued at the time of the report's release, Harvard general counsel Diane Lopez revealed that several faculty members attempted to persuade the university to resume accepting donations from Epstein in 2013, an admission that many within the rank and file of the institution of higher learning continued to maintain ties with the convicted sex offender despite knowing full well of his heinous crimes. A footnote in the report prepared by Lopez read, “A number of the Harvard faculty members we interviewed also acknowledged that they visited Epstein at his homes in New York, Florida, New Mexico, or the Virgin Islands; visited him in jail or on work release; or traveled on one of his planes,” leaving no question that Epstein's ties to the university remained intact.

Epstein's relationship with Austrian-born professor of mathematics and biology Martin Nowak alone demonstrates how little Harvard's ban on accepting donations from the disgraced pedophile did to end his ties to the university. Of the $9.1 million Harvard stated was donated to the university by Epstein between 1998 and 2007 in its 2020 report, a lion's share of $6.5 million of that sum was earmarked for Nowak's work by funding the creation of the Harvard Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, which he would lead. A piece authored by staff writers Stephen M. Marks and Lauren A.E. Schuker in The Harvard Crimson, published on February 7th, 2003, detailed the extent to which Epstein was committed to funding Nowak's research ahead of him beginning his tenure as a faculty member at Harvard in July 2003 after being lured away from Ivy League rival Princeton University, where he served as a professor at its Institute of Advanced Study. It reads, "An elusive tycoon who manages billions of dollars from his private island near St. Thomas has donated $30 million to Harvard to support a newly recruited professor’s research in mathematical biology," highlighting a figure that far exceeds the mere $9.1 million Harvard indicated was the sum of the donations it received from Epstein. That financial arrangement was agreed upon during a January 2003 meeting between Epstein, Nowak, and then-president of Harvard, Larry Summers, serving as the culmination of a years-long effort spent by Epstein on cultivating his influence over Nowak.

Nowak described first meeting Epstein in 1999 after being introduced to him by Princeton University Trustee and former Microsoft Chief Scientific Officer Nathan Myrvolb. From there, their relationship blossomed into a close friendship that proved essential to Epstein maintaining his presence on the Harvard campus following his convictions on felony sex crimes in 2008, which prevented him from making donations to the university directly to leverage his financial might over it. Evidence of Nowak's affinity for Epstein is evident from a letter of his being included in a leather-bound book titled The First Fifty Years, assembled by his co-conspirator, fellow convicted sex offender, and aspiring Trump pardon seeker Ghislaine Maxwell as a gift given to him for his 50th birthday on January 20th, 2003, a date falling in close proximity to the meeting between him, Nowak, and Summers in which Epstein pledged his funding to found the Harvard Program for Evolutionary Dynamics. The book was replete with letters from several other high-profile figures affiliated with Harvard, including those from Harvard Law School Professor and Epstein's personal legal counsel Alan Dershowitz; longtime donor and inner-circle Epstein associate Les Wexner; an anonymous deceased economics professor; the chair of the psychology department who got Epstein his fellowship; former professor and the most insufferable member of any McLaughlin Group panel, Mort Zuckerman; and a previous acting president of the university. According to a report published by The Wall Street Journal, President Donald J. Trump also wrote a letter for the book that contained a drawing of a naked woman. Following the report published by the WSJ, Trump vehemently denied writing the letter and subsequently filed a libel lawsuit against the two reporters who wrote the story. The others aforementioned as part of the book have issued no public comment to the contrary.

Though perhaps more sentimental, the letter written by Nowak included in Epstein's 50th birthday gift was far from the greatest benefit he reaped from their friendship. Through Nowak, Epstein was able to maintain a continued presence on the Harvard campus that spanned the course of the decade following his convictions on sex crimes by obtaining a key card and passcode to the building housing Harvard’s Program for Evolutionary Dynamics. There, a special office was set aside for his personal use. Epstein visited the office more than 40 times from 2010 until just one year before his supposed death in 2018, usually accompanied by young women he states were serving as his "assistants." Epstein's use of the facility despite the university's established understanding of his crimes was so well-known that it became affectionately referred to as "Jeffrey's office." Nowak also invited Epstein to attend math classes he taught to undergraduates at Harvard.

Following the revelation that Nowak coordinated the use of Harvard facilities for Epstein, the professor was placed on paid administrative leave in May 2020. Harvard officials placed Nowak on leave for what they described as him using university resources as tools to help Epstein rehabilitate his image. In addition to facilitating Epstein's presence on campus, the university also found that Nowak approved the posting of flattering and false descriptions of Epstein’s philanthropy and support of Harvard on the website of the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics. Claudine Gay, the disgraced former president of Harvard from 2023 until she stepped down amid accusations of plagiarism in 2024, served as the Dean of the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences, overseeing Nowak from 2018 until 2023, at the time he was placed on leave by the university. When announcing Nowak's suspension, Gay stated, "We do not take this step lightly, but the seriousness of the matter leads us to believe it is not appropriate for Professor Nowak to continue in his role, other than what he will be asked to do to complete the semester."

In March 2021, Gay announced further disciplinary actions taken against Nowak following the conclusion of a deeper investigation into his relationship with Epstein that followed him being suspended from Harvard the previous year. Nowak was issued a two-year suspension from being a principal investigator on new grants and contracts, taking new postdoctoral fellows and researchers, and advising new undergraduate or graduate students. The most punitive action taken against Nowak was the decision by Gay to shut down the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics that he and Epstein founded in 2003. However, the early signs that the action taken against Nowak was little more than a performative exercise aimed at achieving better optics was made clear by Gay's decision to allow him to continue to teach and the announcement that the sanctions levied against him would be revisited in two years. All of the sanctions Gay placed upon Nowak were rescinded in March 2023, restoring his full advisory and research privileges at Harvard and in doing so, memory-holing the transgressions from his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. However, the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics would remained shuttered.

The leniency afforded to Nowak resounded throughout the Harvard faculty as he was embraced by his colleagues after the sanctions against him were lifted by Gay. Professor Scott V. Edwards, Chair of Harvard’s Organismic and Evolutionary Biology Department, and Mathematics Department Chair Michael J. Hopkins were directed by Dean of Science Christopher W. Stubbs to welcome and acclimate Nowak to the resumption of his full duties as a Harvard professor. “We’re glad to have him back,” Edwards stated regarding Nowak’s return. Harvard Law School professor Lawrence Lessig remarked that he believed Nowak was a scapegoat, though he criticized Larry Summers as the “most important actor in the whole story” behind his relationship with Epstein. Lessig emphasized his criticism of Summers by stating how the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics "had a relationship to Epstein because the administration told him he had to have one and he had to maintain it and he had to support it....But for Larry Summers, it’s not even clear any of it would have happened," tacitly absolving Nowak of any wrongdoing in maintaining his relationship with Epstein despite knowing the extent of his sex crimes.

Martin Nowak bearing the brunt of the criticism Harvard faced for its tie to Jeffrey Epstein largely obscured the vast swaths of other faculty members the disgraced pedophile maintained close relations with for years after his status as a convicted sex offender became well-known. In addition to Nowak, Summers, and Dershowitz, Epstein considered psychology professor Stephen M. Kosslyn and Henry A. Rosovsky, the former acting president of Harvard, as close friends. They too were instrumental in enhancing his influence at the university.

Rosovsky's earliest known interaction with Epstein dates back to 1991, when he secured a pledge of $2 million for the construction of a new building for the Hillel organization at Harvard from a small group of donors that included Epstein and Les Wexner. He also contributed to Epstein's 50th birthday gift, writing a letter that included prints of a woman's breasts that he labeled as "specially commissioned by Henry Rosovsky."

Kosslyn served as the Chair of the Department of Psychology at Harvard, recommending Epstein for the visiting fellowship he ultimately gained at the university within that department from 2005 to 2006. Despite lacking the qualifications for the fellowship, it was awarded to Epstein by virtue of his relationship with Kosslyn. While $200,000 of the $9.1 million Harvard admits it received from Epstein was earmarked for Kosslyn's research, he failed to disclose those donations in his application in support of Epstein's fellowship. Kosslyn was also named by Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre as someone she was forced to have sex with, though she later retracted the accusation, calling it a case of mistaken identity. While Giuffre's accusation against Kosslyn was rescinded, that did little to cleanse the indelible stain marring his reputation cast by his association with Epstein while at Harvard.

As Harvard comes into focus yet again from the latest wave in the endless fallout of the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein, it would be naive for the public to believe an institution as corrupted as it has become can be entrusted with any internal review meant to uncover the full extent of its relationship with a figure symbolic of the decay afflicting the foundation of society the university once was seen as a pillar of. Examples of prominent figures at Harvard, including Larry Summers and Martin Nowak, show how Jeffrey Epstein was able to influence the highest echelons of the university's leadership, from entangling its president within his criminal network to financing the creation of flagship programs at the school that put its professors at his disposal. The examples of Henry Rosovsky and Stephen Kosslyn are evidence of how deeply embedded he was throughout the faculty of the university, controlling its inner machinations so precisely that he was able to effectively assign himself to posts within the institution by exerting his influence. Although Harvard has announced a new inquiry that it intends to launch into Epstein's ties to the university, how it has treated those examples from the past shows that despite bearing the motto 'Veritas,' the furthest thing it is concerned with is the truth.

Contributor posts published on Zero Hedge do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of Zero Hedge, and are not selected, edited or screened by Zero Hedge editors.
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