It's Hard for Harvard to Dump Epstein's Money, But It Should
Let’s draw a bright line around sketchy donors.
So what should be done with the contributions the late Jeffrey Epstein doled out to universities and other charitable institutions? A lot of people consider the funds so tainted that the recipients ought to be busily giving the money back. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has announced plans to donate the $800,000 it received from Epstein to a charity that assists victims of sexual abuse. But Harvard University, already facing campus fire for its fundraising practices, has announced no present plans to divest itself of Epstein’s reported $6.5 million dollars in gifts.
Critics are understandably furious. Like most people, were I a university official, I’d shed Epstein’s money in a heartbeat. But perhaps we should delve into the issue a bit more deeply. Because although I would not go so far as to say that Harvard has a point, I believe I understand what has the school worried: the difficulty, in these mad times, of drawing sensible lines.