Speaker 1: Everybody, and welcome to the program. We're gonna get right
into it tonight. Considering this is a relatively long article,
it's really an editorial that was posted by Lawrence Lessig
over at the Harvard Crimson. Now, Lawrence Lessig is the
RL Furman Professor of Law and Leadership at Harvard, and
he's taking Harvard to task in this editorial. Folks, I've
been calling for this kind of rhetoric for quite some time,
and very few people in academia were willing to stand
up and say anything about this stuff. Doctor Stephen Delay
was one of.
Speaker 2: The very few.
Speaker 1: So it's nice to see Lawrence Lessig show up to
the party. I mean a little late, obviously, but still,
what do I always talk about? If the people that
are within these institutions aren't holding their peers and each
other responsible for their behavior, then how can anybody on
the outside ever expect for that to occur? So it
starts on the inside and seeing seeing Lawrence Lessig pen
this essay, this editorial here is certainly a step in
the right direction. So let's jump right into it and
let's see what he has to say. This appeared in
the Harvard Crimson. Author is Lawrence Lessig. Harvard has apparently
concluded its review of its relationship to the convicted child
sex offender Jeffrey E.
Speaker 2: Epstein.
Speaker 1: In September twenty nineteen, after expressing that he profoundly regrets
Harvard's association with Epstein, University President Lawrence S. Bakow promised
to review how we prevent these situations in the future
and what did we get, Like usual when it comes
to these internal reports, or we're gonna have a real
reflective look in the mirror and we're gonna see how
we can be better. Whenever it's that kind of stuff,
it usually falls flat on its face, At least with
my experience here in the Epstein case, every single time
one of these groups does an internal review, it always
turns out to be absolute garbage. The report found Harvard
had taken no money from Epstein after its conviction, though
there were further questions that merited study. Two weeks ago,
after completing that study, Harvard determined to shutter the research
center Epstein's money had founded and discipline its academic director.
Yet in these steps, Harvard has still not given us
a fair account of our past, and worse, in this
latest step, it hides that account behind a scapegoat, and
that is definitely the case. They have scapegoated from the
jump over at Harvard. None of the people at the top,
none of the trustees, Lawrence back Out, none of these
other people that are, you know, top dog at Harvard,
people that are supposed to be responsible for this sort
of thing. None of these people have felt the full
weight of what occurred. None of them have stepped down
or lost their positions, or lost tenure or lost anything
like that. Instead, a few of the people who were
getting that money directly from Epstein ended up being the
only people to take the fall. And while they should have,
right the people that facilitated the Epstein money in the
first place, the scientists that he was collecting and that
we're taking money from him, all of those sons of
bitches should have lost their jobs for sure. They should
have lost tenure, they should have lost everything, honestly, But
the same goes for the people above them. Is there
no accountability when it comes to the management level, so
to say, in this situation, is it just the professors
who should be sanctioned who should lose their jobs or
should everybody who was around at that time everybody who
should have seen what was going on who didn't, either
willfully or because they are morons. All of those people
should not be in the positions that they're in. There
are plenty of capable positions people to fill those positions.
There are three chapters in the evolving relationship between academic
institutions and Jeffrey Epstein. In the first, before his conviction
in two thousand and eight, everyone loves Epstein, and that
is the case. All of these people were gushing over Epstein.
Remember the Vanity Fair article. You know, these people were
gushing over Epstein. And they'll tell you now that, oh,
we had no idea what Jeffrey Epstein was. There was
no signs nobody had any idea. Meanwhile, we know that's
a bunch of bs, right, We all know that that's garbage.
Epstein didn't wake up one morning and decide to become
an absolute scumbag pervert.
Speaker 2: This is who he was.
Speaker 1: This is the kind of person he was. This was
his character. All of those crass jokes while you guys
are all around at a science conference that didn't ring
a few alarm bells, I mean, come on, already, there's
a time and place for everything. You know, you're sitting
around with the guys. It's a poker game. You want
to have some crass language.
Speaker 2: I get it. Yeah, of course that's what guys do.
I get it. You're at a science conference.
Speaker 1: Why do you need to have girls with you? Why
do you need to talk about disgusting topics that you
know these? There's no place for it in the environment
or the setting. And that didn't ring any of the
alarm bells, didn't go off for anybody. It didn't ring
any alarm bells for any.
Speaker 2: Of these people. Please give me a break.
Speaker 1: I'm just you know, I'm so sick of the well,
we had no idea. We didn't hear anything, we didn't
see anything. Well, you certainly didn't say anything. In the
third after the twenty eighteen article in the Miami Herald
detailing his depravity, everyone hates Epstein. A hold on a second,
You guys should have hated him a long time before that.
This stuff was out there. People were talking about who
Epstein was. There was, you know, a lot going on
in that realm of the atmosphere. People knew exactly what
Epstein was. It didn't take the Julie Brown article to
let people know what Jeffrey Epstein was. The Julie Brown
article that got people to start paying attention. But in
the second there's an ambiguous dance between this generous funder
pedophile and universities that recognize complexity in taking his money.
Seeing that that's one of my biggest problems with this.
They knew it was wrong to take old boys dough,
but they did it anyway, and then when they're called
out on it, they start with the whole nonsense of, well,
what do you mean, We had no idea, You knew
everybody knew. You took that money anyway. And what you
thought was that Jeffrey Epstein was in the clear. He
did his time, they weren't gonna come get him again
because of all of his connections. There was no way
that was going to occur. So these dudes hopped right
back into bed with them, had their hand out, and
Jeffrey Epstein was handing out the hundreds of thousands. In
two thousand and eight, former university president Drew G. Faust
resolved that complexity with clarity, but incompletely unlike others such
as Mit, Faust determined that Harvard would take no more
money from Epstein. According to the May twenty twenty report,
Yeah okay, but very much like others, including MIT, she
gave no directive about how the many other ways that
Epstein was connected to the university should be affected by
her determination. Of course, she didn't go all the way.
You know that's called mister Lessig. I'm pretty sure you
know you're a very skilled lawyer, very intelligent man, well schooled,
much more well schooled than me, that's for sure. But
the cynic in me says it was left there on
purpose as a loophole so they could still get that
money while attaining plausible deniability. In particular, she gave no
guidance about how the center that Epstein's main contribution to
Harvard had established, the Program on Evolutionary Evolutionary Dynamics, should
negotiate its continued interactions with Epstein. And I'm sure that
mister Lessig here is going to give us a different
avenue and a different bit of thought. But for me,
the cynic in me, and I'm sorry I have to
be so cynical when dealing with this case, but the
track record has made it so so it looks to
me like this is a loophole that she left in
there so that the professors could still continue to rake
in the dough, while the university at the same time
could say, well, look, we have these guidelines in place.
We're not involved in that. We didn't know anything about it.
So it was kind of a you know, wink wink,
nudge nudge kind of deal. In particular, oh, pastor excuse me,
because from the start, Epstein was constantly engaged with PED
and with others through PED. And that's the program on
Evolutionary Dynamics. That's the the way that they talk about it,
you know, when they abbreviate it, it's called the PED.
According to a letter that Martin Nowak, the ped's academic director,
sent to administrators when the center was founded, Harvard's then
president Lawrence H.
Speaker 2: Summers.
Speaker 1: Huh, that name sounds familiar, doesn't It got Epstein to
pay the rent for ped's office not on Harvard's campus,
but in commercial space in Harvard's Square. And you all
remember Larry Summers, right, Lawrence H. Summers, good friend of Obama's.
You know, one of those guys, Yeah, Larry Summers, typical
academia scuzzball. From the beginning, Epstein treated that space as
a second office in Cambridge. Epstein traveled to Cambridge regularly
to meet with Harvard's most luminary, including Summers, regularly but
not exclusively at ped Those meetings are described as interesting
and intellectual in Noac's letter. There is no suggestion they
involved any inappropriate behavior, well beyond, of course, the inappropriateness
of including Epstein himself. So I'm certainly not laying out
the charges that there was inappropriate behavior as far as
abusing girls here. I'll leave that to some of the
other fantasists that are floating around. What I am saying, though,
is Larry Summers is an absolute jerk, an absolute scuzzball,
and an absolute moron. Larry Summers is the kind of
guy that epitomizes everything that was wrong with academia and
their relationship with Epstein, Politically connected, locked in at the university,
top of his field, and the exact kind of guy
Jeffrey Epstein loved. Hanging around. These sores continued long after
the two thousand and eight ban on raising Epstein money.
The question is why some thought the ban would be temporary.
Some hoped Epstein's reputation might be restored. All right, Well,
hold on hit the Brakes restored.
Speaker 2: His reputation restored.
Speaker 1: Huh Again, we're not talking about somebody who was involved
in a money a money scam here. We're not talking
about somebody who got into a fight in the bar
and things went too far and the person he was
fighting with got hurt severely. You know, people make mistakes, right,
you can forgive mistakes, is what I'm trying to get at.
But this is no gray area mistake. This is no
Ah Man, I really, I really really screwed up this time.
That's not what this was. This was human trafficking of children,
point blank period. Some believed it morally obligatory to give
a criminal a chance at redemption, and.
Speaker 2: That's such BS two.
Speaker 1: All of these elites love to talk about that, But
what have they done to really give people who need
a second chance a second chance? The dude that got
popped for selling some pot, guy on the corner, who
got nailed with some crack who's doing a lot longer
than the dude who had the same amount of powdered coke.
Where are they to help these people out? Nowhere to
be found are they? They loved the blow VI eight
and they love the virtue signal but they don't love
to strap on their boots and get down to work.
Noac was told as much by his spiritual advisor, which
he shared in his letter to the administration. His spiritual advisor, huh,
I mean, are you really your spiritual advisor told you
that you should help Jeffrey Epstein refurbish his image.
Speaker 2: Huh?
Speaker 1: Talk about passing the buck, talk about absolutely passing the buck.
Whatever the reason, the reality is that there was no
real change in the practical relationship that Epstein had to
Harvard beyond his ability to write Harvard a check. The
meetings continued, the relationships grew deeper, The conversations on and
near campus were many, and there are just tons and
tons of people who have talked about this, who have
witnessed it, and it's in their report itself, So there's
no denying Jeffrey Epstein's presence on the campus and around
these professors. What continued as well was PD's need for money.
Like Epstein's, PD's rent was substantial. Noak reports that at first,
after Foss ban, Harvard had agreed to assume it, but
after the financial crisis, Noac was informed that he would
have to raise it himself, so again, Harvard is not
getting off the hook here, at least not with me.
Some people might let them off the hook, but not me.
They're the institution here. They're the ones where the bucks stops.
So after the financial meltdown, you clowns didn't have the
money to fund this department, so you told this professor
it's up to him to do it himself. And then
there was no checks and balances, Like you had never
seen Epstein's name before. All of its smacks of absolute
b s. Foundations usually don't give academic grantees money to
cover rent, so everyone knew those additional funds would have
to be, like Epstein, from private individuals. An FAS Development
Office staff member encouraged Noak as late as twenty seventeen
to ask Epstein to ask his friends to help. According
to the May twenty twenty report, so we want Epstein's money,
but we don't want the stink of Epstein on it.
So let's have Epstein middle man it and get some
of his rich ahole homies to fill the void. And
then that'll give us the cover we need because we
could say, well, Epstein didn't give us the money. Insert
scumbag here did, as late as twenty seventeen to ask
Epstein to ask his friends to help. Noak followed Harvard's direction,
Epstein obliged, securing substantial support from his friend. Oh here's
a name that all of you are going to know,
Leon D. Black, among others. So you see, the Leon
Black story just keeps getting deeper and deeper though quicksand
as a Holt and we talked about this months ago,
months and months and months ago, that Leon Black was
in this up to his ears and that he has
some explaining to do. Now you add on the new
allegations against Leon Black. Oh yeah, oh boy is up
up the creek right now without a paddle. There's no
doubt about that. Throughout this period, apparently no one with
any authority, certainly not the university, not its former president Summers,
not its development office, not the dozen or so Harvard's
most elite, saw any inappropriateness in this ongoing academic relationship.
And that right there says it all everybody involved, everybody
that was around. If they're still there, if they're still
drawing these gigantic ass paychecks at this overpriced, once great university,
they should all be fired. A new broom sweeps clean.
What they should do is get Morgan Freeman's character from
that Stand By Me movie and have him show up
at Harvard and whip these guys into shape. Despite the
obvious harm that a sex offender could trigger in the
members of our community who themselves might have been victims
of sexual abuse, the elite of Harvard's elite continue to
nurture a relationship with a sex offender. Yeah, because that's
what the elite do. I hate to be the bearer
of bad news for anyone who holds these people up
on high. But the so called elite, Yeah, that's a
class of sick ass people, a whole group of people
who literally have zero morals and who do not care
about anything that does not increase their wealth or their power.
And that's not just me saying it. Their actions bear
it out. Despite the clarity of all of our views. Now,
they apparently so saw no wrong in what all of
them were doing then, at least until chapter three, when
all worked diligently to forget what had happened between two
thousand and eight and twenty and eighteen. Yo, Lessig is
going hard in the pain here, he's leaving, He's really
shooting from the hip and giving all of these guys
the business as he should. It's about time so and
at Harvard stood up and did the right thing. Harvard's
made twenty twenty reports celebrated Faust's moral clarity, but it
identified some details that required further investigation. In March, Harvard
completed that determination. It did not release any public accounting. Instead,
its conclusions were shared internally by email to the affected departments. Predictably,
that email was leaked.
Speaker 2: And in this day.
Speaker 1: And age, if you have some sort of explosive email
and you're in a situation like at an institution like Harvard,
you have to expect that the email is getting leaked.
So you better be on your game, beyond your p's
and q's, and say exactly what you want to say
in that email. The effect was completely foreseeable. Airbrush from
the history are the many Harvard luminaries who participated in
and encouraged the ongoing relationship with Epstein after two thousand
and eight. Left standing alone is noak ped's academic director.
Speaker 2: Who is now to be disciplined.
Speaker 1: And disciplined is in quotes, he's not wrong no act,
while should be, while you should be disciplined, and he
should be in big trouble for all of this, and,
like I said, lose his job. In my opinion, all
of these other people need to lose their jobs too.
What's protecting them that they're a trustee, that they're so
called part of the elite. Enough already with these people,
and thus we the community are allowed the comfortable view
that Drew Foss got it right in two thousand and
eight and the university followed her lead, even if even
if a very few among us apparently didn't get the memo.
So kind of a cover right for Harvard here with
that statement, Oh, it's not the whole institution. We got
it right with what Foss said, but there are still
still some Yes, that doesn't cut it with me. Sorry,
everybody who was around, let me be very clear, everybody
who was around, who was involved when Epstein donated that money,
they all need to be fired. Yet this framing is absurd,
and its lie is revealed in the thinness of the
charges against Martin Noak because Noak has not been punished
for associating with Epstein. How could he be when so
many others from Harvard, much more famous and prominent, had
associated with Epstein as well, And again it comes back
to for me anyway, this is a Harvard problem, folks.
Something stinks at that university. And I wouldn't spend one
red cent to send my child there, not one cent.
It is absurd what occurred in those alleged hollowed halls.
Neither has he been punished because he asked Epstein to
help him address PDS funding needs by securing donations from
Epstein's friend Leon Black. How could he be when Harvard's
Development Development Office itself asked Novak to ask Epstein for help.
And there's the rub of it, right, And he gets
to the heart of the issue, in my opinion, and
that is everybody who is there, everybody involved, all of
these people that are hitting us with virtuous signaling. Okay,
the virtue signaling has to stop by these people. Somebody
has to take responsibility for what occurred. You're all making
big bucks and with that big money comes big responsibility,
or it should.
Speaker 2: Rather.
Speaker 1: Noak is being disciplined because of offenses that are plenty,
not offenses at all, or that, when committed, were not
viewed as anything more than simple mistakes. The most extraordinary
of these is the charge and Faculty of Arts and
Sciences Dean Claudeine Gay's notification to Noak, which states that
he exhibited profound negligence in misrepresenting the source of PEDS
matching funds to one of his funding sources, the Templeton
found Foundation. This is a gross misrepresentation in itself.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 1: Not a big fan of Claudine Gay or the way
she handled this, And to make Noak the scapegoat and
the only one really getting punished is laughable considering we
know the relationship somebody like Larry Summers had with Jeffrey Epstein.
If they were to sanction everybody at Harvard who had
a relationship with Epstein, those would be some empty asshols, folks.
The May Report had speculated this might have happened, but
no Axe. Emails with the Templeton Foundation revealed that the
precise words used to report his funding were actually requested
by the foundation. The Templeton Foundation was neither confused or misled,
meaning there could be no misrepresentation, so they knew nothing
was misrepresented to them. They knew exactly what they were
getting into, they knew what the money was for, and
they knew where the money originated. They did not care.
And that's really what it comes down to, That's what
it boils down to. The balance is just as weak.
From the very start, Harvard knew Epstein treated PD as
a second office. According to the May twenty twenty report,
Harvard knew as early as two thousand and six that
Epstein even had his own phone. So again, Epstein has
set up, got this office, Larry Summer sets that up,
got himself a phone line. He's missed a big shit
on the campus of Harvard. Now, yeah, I'm Jeffrey Epstein,
college drop out, drop out here, drop out there, but
got myself a fellowship at Harvard. What an absolute joke,
and what disrespect to the people who actually work hard
for those fellowships. According to Noak, Summers walked with Epstein
as he secured access to ped's offices with his.
Speaker 2: Own key card.
Speaker 1: Not once did he or the university say that this
access was wrong or must end. But now Noak is
to be disciplined in part because PED gave Epstein a
different key card after the Harvard access system had changed.
So even after they changed the system, the access system,
even after you know, they updated the locks, they had
to make sure their boy Epstein was taken care of. Right,
They had to make sure their golden ticket was taken
care of. They had to make sure Jeffrey was all right.
Speaker 2: Sure.
Speaker 1: I guess one could say that a university wide change
in security protocols was meant to signal to PED that
it should stop granting Epstein access to the PED offices.
But wouldn't a memo from the administration have been a
clear and cheap way to send that message. Well, they
got money to burn there, obviously. I mean, with the
insane amount of money they charge the students, every single
toilet bowl should be gold plated. They should all be
eating five star meals every night in the commissary. And
you know, whatever the top Egyptian count sheets are.
Speaker 2: They got to have those.
Speaker 1: This is Harvard after all. Finally, Noak has to be
disciplined because the Center allowed Epstein's biography to appear on
ped's web page after Epstein's publicist requested it. Of course,
the story of Center benefactors commonly appear on Center web pages.
Speaker 2: Of course they do.
Speaker 1: That's part of it, right, What do you think these
guys donate all of this money and they don't get
anything on the flip back, of course they do, But
during a period in which Harvard was inviting Jeffrey Epstein
to the launch of its capital campaign and the most
elite of the elite at Harvard were regularly meeting with
Epstein at PED and around Cambridge. Fas blames Noak for
failing to recognize that it was a misuse of the
Harvard dot edu domain to reveal Epstein as a friend
of PED. Wasn't wrong to take his money, okay, wasn't
wrong to use him as a benefactor, wasn't wrong to
give him an office, But it was wrong to let
everybody know that all about saving face. It's never about
the people who were affected. It's never about the girls
who were abused, or anything like that.
Speaker 2: You would think, with as much.
Speaker 1: Involvement people from Harvard have, that they'd start their own
sort of program here where they'd offer free courses to
these gals. None of these offenses would have even been
noticed but for Harvard's need to appear vigilant, if only
against one of the very many who continue to engage
Epstein at Harvard after two thousand and eight, that one
it's scapegoat. It was wrong for Harvard to continued any
association with Epstein after two thousand and eight. No one
should be forced to live or work in an environment
that celebrates in any way a man who crossed this
critical line, or woman at that for that matter. Let's
be very clear, thirty eight percent of people who are
engaging in trafficking are women. All right, we went through
that report already.
Speaker 2: But the point stands.
Speaker 1: Nobody should feel uncomfortable at work, nobody should feel uncomfortable
at school. And this environment, I'll tell you what, not
an environment I'd want my people in. That's for sure.
Sex abuse is permanent, Its survivors carry its costs forever.
All of them are entitled, at the very least to
an environment that does not trigger re traumatization. To have
suffered from the likes of an Epstein and then see
Harvard's most elite most elite. Hanging with Epstein is to
add injury to insult. And that is a fact. That
is definitely a fact, and it's no different. Let's be
very clear with Kamala Harris hanging out with Bill Clinton.
We have to be consistent here, right, None of these
dudes should be given air to breathe if they're involved
in this sort of thing, and this wrong is about
much more than funding. It's about the continuing relationship with
so many at Harvard. Our accounting for that is wildly incomplete,
and it betrays the truth and a commitment to institutional
integrity to allow Harvard to stand as innocent while one
faculty member went rogue. And look, I couldn't agree more
with what he's saying here, folks. I think that noac
needs to be disciplined, needs to be punished.
Speaker 2: But everybody does.
Speaker 1: I just want I want to drive that point home.
The story of Chapter two at Harvard is not the
story of one bad apple. It is of an institution
blinded by what money, brilliance celebrity from what seems to
us now as an obvious moral truth. Of course, we
were right not to take Epstein's money after two thousand
and eight, but we were deeply wrong to continue to
celebrate him at Harvard in all the ways that so
many of the most prominent among us did. That is powerful,
and he's calling to account all of his colleagues on
campus who took part in refurbishing this guy's image and
helping him have this access. That wrong is not excused
or hidden with the scapegoat. We need an honest accounting
of that past and a plan for how Harvard will
avoid this failure in the future. Should all criminals be
banished always? Should particular criminals, those whose crimes particularly affect
members of the Harvard community be banished always? And by
always I don't mean for any purpose. An event at
which a criminal was asked to reflect on at least
some crimes or even offer his justification could be different,
at least if properly framed, from a workshop in which
the criminal is just one more participant, celebrated only, or
especially because he happens to be rich. These are hard questions,
no doubt, especially in an age of tweet length attention spans. Boy,
can I get a clap from the back of the
room there? That is exactly the age we're in, the
attention span of a tweet. But it betrays our tradition
to hide from these more complicated questions because some might misunderstand.
We are a university that openly and eagerly engaged with
the child sex predator, not just before he was convicted,
but long after. How did our culture allow this to happen?
And how can we now allow this failure to be
obscured by scapegoating. Just one yes, Harvard's virtue has been
signaled to anyone blind to what actually happened right here
among us. But the vice of what happened, the open
and regular engagement with a sex offender, has not been
reckoned here. It is that which Harvard must finally account for, openly, fairly,
and honestly. Well, folks, there you have it, somebody finally
connected to Harvard, somebody with a serious voice on campus
calling his colleagues to account. If you'd like to contact me,
you can do that at Bobby Kapuchi at ProtonMail dot com.
That's b O B b y c A p U
C c I at ProtonMail dot com. You can also
find me on Twitter at b O B B y
underscore c A p U C c I. All of
the links that go with this episode can be found
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