Harvard has been at the center of numerous scandals involving money recently. Normally known more for its accounting program than its actual accounting, Harvard is under the spotlight in a very different way now.
Last week, the university was under scrutiny for receiving federal aid money in spite of their billion-dollar grant allocation. Recently, the school came under fire for accepting money from Jeffrey Epstein.
On Monday, the university announced that it would be donating the Epstein money to sex crimes victim advocacy charities. Harvard has long been criticized for its relationship with the financier and convicted sex criminal. Infamously, Epstein visited the campus more than 40 times following his release from prison in 2010.
In 2019, Epstein went to jail for charges including criminal sex trafficking and sexual assault of minors. It was clear that elites – from heads of state to wealthy businessmen –frequented his numerous properties. Prosecutors were building a sprawling case against Epstein and his co-conspirators as he awaited trial.
However, after only being in jail for a few weeks, Epstein was found dead. Officials ruled his death a suicide, but many people think his demise was surprising and mysterious. The disgraced financier was under suicide watch. The prison considered him a major risk for prison violence. In spite of these facts, no one guarded his cell the night he died.
What’s more, the CCTV cameras that watched over his cell apparently suffered a hardware failure the night of his death. Needless to say, his sudden passing likely made many of Epstein’s former associates breath a sigh of relief. Without the financier to corroborate allegations, many of them will likely never be connected with Epstein’s crimes.
Harvard donating the money gifted by Epstein is one of the ways the university is trying to distance itself from the convicted financial mogul. Additionally, Harvard has released an extensive document that goes into detail about their relationship with Epstein. The document, which is 27 pages long, admits how many Harvard professors visited Epstein at his numerous properties.
This has led to increased scrutiny as to the nature of these visits. Prosecutors presume that these properties, namely Epstein’s private island, were hot spots for grooming underaged girls. These girls were there so that elite, high-society individuals could visit them for presumably illicit reasons. The exact nature of these visits is unclear, however, due to Epstein’s sudden death in prison.
