Speaker 1: Jeffrey Epstein and his ties to Harvard have been very
well publicized at this point. We know that they had
a very very cozy relationship, and we know that Harvard
played loose with the truth. The question I have always
had is where is the outcry from the world of academia.
Now we have had some people step forward, like doctor
Stephen Delay, who were outraged by the behavior of not
only Harvard but by the board, and we needed more
of that. We need more people who were in the
world of academia to be critical of this sort of thing.
There is no place for this in the halls of
a place like Harvard. When you send your children to
Harvard for that amount of money, you should expect certain things, Okay,
Like you know, they should get a good education, they
should have quality professors, and they shouldn't have to worry
about a pedophile having an office on the campus. In
today's article, we have another person, this time a professor
from Harvard, who has a few things to say about
what occurred. Our article is from the Scientific American. The
author is Naomi Orescus. Headline Jeffrey Epstein's Harvard connections show
how money can distort research, letting the rich pay for
science that interests them is a bad idea, even if
they aren't convicted sex offenders, and I agree with that.
I think that this research should be something that is
done by these departments, and they should really be vetting
where this money comes from. There's no excuse in this
day and age, with all of the technology, to not
know where these donations are originating from. This past May,
Harvard University, where I teach, issued a report on its
relationlationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. It was admirably
forthright miacolpa, highlighting three areas of concern. The first was
the contradiction of addressing sexual assault and harassment on campus
while accepting money from a man who had promoted sexual
abuse of minors. And I don't know how they can
do both right. I don't know how you can talk
about sexual assault and harassment on campus from your Ivory
tower while at the same time accepting money from Jeffrey Epstein,
having him involved in the campus he has an office.
All of that absolutely hypocritical and disgusting. The second was
the mockery made of academic standards when, after donating two
hundred thousand dollars to the psychology department. Epstein was appointed
as a visiting fellow there despite a complete lack of
appropriate academic qualifications. And we talked about this already as well. Well.
Imagine being one of these people who has put in
the time, put in all the work to try and
become a fellow, and then Jeffrey Epstein just cruises right
on in with his two hundred thousand dollars donation and
gets that title. I would be absolutely incensed. I would
go crazy, honestly if that was the case. If I
got passed up for this Jeffrey Epstein guy to become
a fellow because he had a bunch of dough forget it,
I would light the place on fire verbally. The third
was his close connection to Harvard's program for Evolutionary Dynamics.
Even after his release from prison, Epstein continued to be
a frequent visitor. Between twenty ten and twenty eighteen, Epstein,
at that point, a registered sex offender, went to the
PED offices more than forty times during that period. He
had an on campus office and a key card and
a passcode with which he could enter buildings during off hours.
Imagine that, huh, A key card, he had a pass,
he can go around off hours. And we're not talking
about a normal human being here. We're not talking about
a man who is just an average rich guy who
has a couple of quirks. We're talking about a serial
predator who loved to prey on underage girls and girls
who appeared to be underage. And you're going to basically
give this guy the keys to the kingdom of Harvard.
You're gonna let this predator romp around your campus looking
for girls to send Gilaine in to groom. It is
absolutely beyond the pale of unconscionable. It's not just that
an awful person was able to buy a halo of respectability.
The Epstein affair brings to light a much larger problem.
It undermines the integrity of the research enterprise when individuals
can pick and choose lines of inquiry that appeal to
them simply because they can pay for them. And you
would always think right that in a place like Harvard
there would be plenty of money to go around for projects.
I mean, they charge enough to go to the damn school,
so you would think that there would be plenty of
benefactors around that are willing to pony up the dough.
Normal people, right, real businessmen without these sort of proclivities,
Dudes that aren't sex traffickers. I mean, it's really that
hard to find them. There are tons of rich people around,
tons of people who went to Harvard. I am sure
some of them would have gladly ponied up some dough.
But instead Harvard decided to get in bed with this serpent,
and not only get in bed with this serpent, but
open the gates to the backyard and let this serpent
free amongst the students. Academic life is tough in part
because researchers with good ideas have to compete for funding.
When peer review operates properly, it identifies the best ideas
to support, usually by using panels, not individuals, to see
it that a range of views is represented. And I
think that that's probably the best way to go about it, right,
A panel, a bunch of people taking a look at
what's going on to see who should get the funds,
who has the best idea, And that's the proper method
for something like this. But instead it's all about guys
like Jeffrey Epstein bagman who show up and they move
heaven and Earth with their donations, and even in a
place like Harvard, folks, even with these scientists, it's all
about the money. The process is imperfect. But women, people
of color, young scholars, investigators at non elite universities, and
individuals promoting ideas that challenge conventional wisdom at least have
a chance. And I think that's a good thing, right
we don't. There are so many smart people out there
from all walks of life, all colors, all creeds, all
and I think it's important, especially in an institution like Harvard,
that everybody has an equal opportunity. If their ideas are
good enough to get funding, you shouldn't have to get
funding from a guy like Jeffrey Epstein. Again, I am
sure that there are many benefactors at Harvard who would
gladly donate some money to this sort of research. But
it was lazy, it was easy, and they knew that
Epstein was ready to come out of the pocket not
only for their projects, but also for their personal gain,
because we know that these professors that were working with
Epstein were also taking money on the side. But more
than two thirds of Epstein's donations six and a half million,
went to ped director Martin Nowak. Epstein encouraged others to
give two million to geneticists George Church. Both were already
extremely well established and well funded. Epstein was helping the
flush get flusher. Church notes that Epstein's funding supported not
just him, but also his large and diverse team. No
Act did not reply to a request for comment. And again,
these guys that Jeffrey Epstein was funding, I don't think
he was just doing it out of the kindness of
his heart. There was an ulterior motive here. He wanted
access to this research. The people that were running him
as an asset wanted access to this research. Do you
think it's just a coincidence that he was basically just
in the middle of Los Alamos and the Santa Fe
Institute with his location in New Mexico. That's not a coincidence.
He had access to scientists at both places, and lord
only knows what the hell sort of information they gave him.
What made it even worse was the Epstein was a
latter d eugenicist whose interests were tied to a delusional
notion of seating the human race with his own DNA.
And if you think he wasn't talking about that with
these sciences missing, you're missing the point here. Jeffrey Epstein
and his scientist cronies, they all were on the same page.
These people knew what Epstein was after, they knew what
he wanted, and they willingly got into bed with him.
Given this stance, it is particularly disturbing that he focused
his largess on research on the genetic basis of human behavior.
Human genetics is an ethically sensitive and intellectually contested domain
where it behooves us to ensure that the highest standards
of scientific rigor are in place and that the non
genetic explanations for behavior are given a fair chance to compete.
And that was not the case. Jeffrey Epstein inserted himself
into a highly controversial scientific subject and nobody called him out.
Nobody stepped up to the plate and asked, what the
hell is going on here, Martin Noak, Why are you
accepting so much money from Jeffrey Epstein? Why are you
paling around with Jeffrey Epstein? Why are you visib his properties?
But nobody did any of that. It was just all
par for the course. And to tell you the truth, folks,
what that tells us is that this is just how
things were done. This was business as usual at Harvard
and these other universities, and their canned explanations and their
apologies are garbage. Scientists might claim that Epstein's money in
no way caused them to lower their standards, but we
have broad evidence that the interests of funders often influenced
the work done. And that is scary again, because we
know Epstein was not just working for himself. We know
that Epstein had handlers, We know that they had demands.
So with these scientists and the projects that they're working on,
it terrifies me to know that these people were giving
Jeffrey Epstein their research, I would guess, and who knows
who Everstein was passing that along to. The New York
Times concluded that in this case, it led researchers to
give credence to some of mister Epstein's half baked scientific musings.
True or not, it should trouble us that a corrupt
man was making decisions affecting research at a major US university.
He had no academic competence, yet he effectively made choices
about which research initiatives were interesting and promising. I'm sorry
to share that with you, folks. I know that we
like to think that our scientists and our doctors are
above reproach, that they would never ever get into bed
with Jeffrey Epstein, But that is not the case, like
in any other part of the world, or feel that
you might be in money talks, money talks, and especially
when it's Jeffrey Epstein type money. Moreover, when Epstein got
into trouble, faculty members defended him and even visited him
in jail. When Epstein's lawyer, Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz, needed
help to argue on semantic grounds that Epstein was not
guilty as charged, he reached out to Harvard's psychologist and
linguist Steven Pinker. Pinker, who never took funds from Epstein,
says he did not know to what use his advice
was being put, and aided Dershowitz only as a favor
to a friend and a colleague. But that is precisely
the point. Epstein had purchased friends in high places, and
those friends had friends who helped him, even if inadvertently. Well,
I wouldn't go that far, and I think you're being
a little kind to them saying it was inadvertant. But
to be honest with you, I think they all knew
what Epstein was, and I think that they didn't care,
because at the end of the day, it was all
about funding these projects. It was all about more money
in the bank, and the scientific pursuit of whatever topic
that they were studying went out the window when Jeffrey
Epstein came in and tainted the situation with his money
and his requests. Again, folks, I don't have any direct
evidence right that I can point to to tell you
all right, well, you can see here how these scientists
were giving Jeffrey Epstein their research and Epstein was doing
whatever with it. But if Jeffrey Epstein was working for
an intelligence agency, if Jeffrey Epstein was compiling blackmail data
on powerful people, what would make us think that he
was not also collecting the secrets from the scientific world
and passing them on to his handlers. These matters have
come to light because Epstein was a criminal, But Harvard
is not alone in accepting tainted money. Universities need to
develop policies to ensure that research funding is based on merit,
not cronyism, and research who are seeking public trust must
be able to show that their own ethical compasses are
not deflected by the magnetism of money. Well, that's definitely
how it should be, but I think that it's going
to be hard to get these institutions on board with that.
We all know that money is the life's blood of
these projects, and we all know that there are other
men and women like Jeffrey Epstein and Glen Maxwell out there.
It is up to us, and it is most certainly
up to these universities to hold them to a higher
standard when receiving funds for these schools, because if not,
we're just going to have a repeat of this later
on down the road. Another Siko's going to show up,
and he's going to exploit the same loopholes and exploit
the same shoddy, shitty system, and we're going to have
a repeat of Jeffrey Epstein all over again. Unless, of course,
more people like Naomi Ourescus and doctor Stephen Delay step forward.
When academia starts to rally around this, and academia starts
to call out their own, then we are most certainly
on the right path. If you'd like to contact me,
you can do that at Bobby Kapucci at ProtonMail dot com.
That's b O. B b y c ap U c
c I at ProtonMail dot com. You can also find
me on Twitter at Bobby Underscore c A p U
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