Many of Jeffrey Epstein’s ties to prominent universities and academics, which he maintained through monetary donations and luxury gifts, have been known since his 2019 arrest and suicide in a Manhattan jail cell. After the US Justice Department published 3 million new documents related to criminal investigations of the late sex trafficker last month, however, it became clear that his influence in higher education was far more sweeping.
As a result of email exchanges included in this new tranche of files, several professors and university administrators have found themselves publicly associated with Epstein for the first time, and caught in a maelstrom of angry students, alumni, and colleagues.
Merely appearing in files doesn’t implicate someone in any alleged criminality, but the turmoil over these interactions has touched all manner of campuses, from small arts schools to major public universities and the Ivy League. The faculty members who cultivated relationships with Epstein, suddenly called to account, have largely insisted that they only saw him as a deep-pocketed donor only inviting further controversy over the financial ethics of US academia.
At the School of Visual Arts in New York, for example, flyers declaring “ONE OF YOUR TEACHERS IS IN THE FILES” and “SVA WANTS NO TIES WITH EPSTEIN” appeared on campus bulletin boards in the wake of the latest DOJ release. The posters displayed emails between Epstein and David A. Ross, the school’s MFA Art Practice program chair and former director of multiple contemporary art museums, from October 2009, more than a year after Epstein pleaded guilty in Florida to solicitation of prostitution and of procurement of minors to engage in prostitution. In one of those exchanges, Epstein floated the idea for an art exhibition titled “Statutory,” featuring “girls and boys ages 14 - 25.. where they look nothing like their true ages.” Epstein further explained, “Some people go to prison because they can't tell true age. controversial . fun.” Ross replied, “You are incredible. This would be a very owerful [sic] and freaky book.”
The poster campaign was how some on campus first learned of the Ross-Epstein relationship. A current SVA student who requested anonymity out of concern for actions the school might take against them said they only became aware that Ross was in the Epstein files when they saw the flyers. (This individual also shared photos of two different bulletins about Ross with WIRED.) “I would like to see [the school administration] do an audit of all the MFA chairs,” they say.
Another current SVA student who also requested anonymity due to their employment by the school tells WIRED that campus security removed some of the flyers about Ross. “I am a student worker, and my boss has been telling my coworkers to take down flyers to avoid getting in trouble with the administration,” they say. That didn’t necessarily stop chatter around the school. (SVA did not respond to a question as to whether campus staff were instructed to remove the posters about Ross’ emails with Epstein.)
This student regards the Epstein-Ross correspondence not as a scandal specific to SVA but “emblematic of things wrong with the art world and higher education as a whole,” both of which are “saturated with people with money and connections.” They believe that “the true extent of [Epstein’s] influence is much larger than what we can read in the files.”
Ross resigned his position at SVA on February 3, saying in a statement to the New York Times that he met Epstein in the 1990s as director of the Whitney Museum of American Art. “I knew him as a wealthy patron and collector, and it was part of my job to befriend people who had the capacity and interest in supporting the museum,” he wrote. Ross explained that he believed Epstein’s account of his Florida conviction was a “political frame-up.” When Epstein was again under investigation, this time for the alleged sex trafficking of minors, Ross reached out in support, which he called “a terrible mistake of judgment” in his statement, saying he later felt “ashamed that I fell for his lies.”
Ross did not reply to a request for further comment. In a statement shared with WIRED, the School of Visual Arts said it was “aware of correspondence” between Epstein and Ross, and had accepted Ross’ resignation on February 3.
Across the country at UCLA, Mark Tramo, an associate adjunct professor of neurology, has faced harsh scrutiny over his old emails to Epstein. A petition calling for his termination has drawn more than 10,000 signatures, and his classes are now taking place remotely via Zoom.
Tramo’s name appears hundreds of times in the latest Epstein files, with three email exchanges capturing the most attention. In the first, Tramo appended a postscript to a 2017 message: “Was just reading today that newborns will suck on a pacifier more vigorously if it triggers playback of a recording of her/his mother’s voice than another woman’s voice.” Although there is no evidence that Tramo meant anything more than to share an interesting tidbit of research, the note has been widely interpreted in the context of Epstein’s pedophilia. In the other thread, from 2010, Tramo forwarded Epstein two emails from students inquiring about his area of research. Epstein replied, “are either of these cute.” Tramo answered, “we’ll see! (you’re terrible!).”
In a statement Tramo shared with WIRED, he explained that the pacifier email “was part of an ongoing conversation with philanthropists re: funding proposals to develop new technologies and conduct clinical trials that could enhance brain development for critically-ill infants inhabiting the impoverished, chaotic, acoustic environments of Neonatal ICUs.” The statement also notes that he was introduced to Epstein while teaching at Harvard and stayed in touch because of Epstein’s philanthropic contributions.
It’s clear that Tramo saw Epstein as a valuable source of funding; according to Tramo’s comments to the Los Angeles Times, the pacifier comment came amidst his pitch for a two-year clinical study called the “The Jeffrey Epstein Project for Brain Development in Critically-Ill Infants,” which was to focus on the effects of auditory enrichment. Tramo was seeking half a million dollars for the project, which never came to fruition.
Yet even a purely transactional partnership between Tramo and Epstein has been unsettling for some at UCLA. As a recent op-ed column in the school’s Daily Bruin newspaper argued, the entire situation raises questions about ethical standards in university fundraising.
What’s more, Tramo reached out to Epstein supportively in 2007, when Tramo was at Harvard and Epstein was reportedly preparing his plea deal on sex crime charges in Florida. “I read the newspapers early this morning,” Tramo wrote in a message to an Epstein assistant, according to a Bloomberg report. “Please remind him that boys from The Bronx (even if they end up at Harvard) have long memories, know all about cops, and stay true to their friends through thick and thin (no less peccadilloes).” Tramo said in a statement shared with WIRED and other publications that he had no idea the charges involved a minor. Over the span of a decade, Epstein gave generously to the Institute for Music and Brain Science, which Tramo founded and currently directs. He made a $100,000 donation in 2017.
“Guilt by association, shoot first and ask questions later, guilty until proven innocent (which I am),” Tramo tells WIRED in an email regarding the outcry over his relationship with Epstein. “McCarthyism with more than a dollop of 17th century hysteria à la The Crucible.”
The UCLA alumnus who began the petition to fire Tramo, requesting anonymity to avoid jeopardizing their own career in academia, is dissatisfied with how the school has handled the situation. “Even if the pacifier email is as innocent as Tramo claims, he still majorly violated the trust of his students, patients, and colleagues,” says this individual, who did not take a class with Tramo while at UCLA. “Continuing to share information about students after Epstein's arrest and inappropriate responses to prior emails shows an utter lack of judgement.”
Of those particular emails, Tramo says, “Please keep in mind I had no idea he was a pedophile.” (Nevertheless, this was after Epstein’s Florida conviction, which was preceded by Tramo’s vow to “stay true” to him during his legal troubles.) Tramo adds, “I did say ‘you're terrible’ at some risk of antagonizing him and losing a donor. I was focused on his philanthropy, not on his quirks.”
According to an email screenshot shared on the r/UCLA subreddit, Tramo on February 5 moved a class to Zoom because he and several students had come down with the flu. He tells WIRED, however, that campus police advised him to hold the class on Zoom after getting wind of a campus protest regarding his correspondence with Epstein. When a “non-enrolled student invaded the [virtual] classroom” on that occasion, he says, he was told to keep the class on Zoom for the rest of the quarter for safety reasons. UCLA did not return requests for comment on Tramo or any safety guidance he may have received.
It’s not just students and alumni expressing outrage over Tramo continuing to teach at UCLA. Bonnie Goff, a lecturer in the school’s psychology department, says she protested Tramo’s presence on campus in person at the campus neurology building and has “been very vocal about my disappointment with the university’s response regarding this matter.” Goff posted a video about Tramo’s pacifier email on Instagram that received more than a million views. “As far as I know, UCLA has been absolutely silent on the matter,” she says.
The school administration did not respond to confirm or deny whether it was considering an investigation. While it appears to have removed Tramo from a webpage of UCLA experts available for media appearances, his faculty profile is still up.
Epstein found ways to infiltrate the intelligentsia besides making overtures to cash-hungry researchers. Before becoming dean of Boston University’s College of Communication in 2019, Mariette DiChristina corresponded with Epstein by email and phone, and met with him in person. At the time, she was the editor in chief of Scientific American, and even invited Epstein to the magazine’s editorial meetings, as Business Insider first reported in 2023. “He’s done so much for science, I think that deserves some fun!” she wrote in a 2014 email about giving Epstein insider access to the publication.
According to Alyssa Sutherland, a senior at BU’s College of Communication, the additional emails between DiChristina and Epstein unveiled in January have failed to cause a stir on campus, despite the independent student newspaper reporting on how the dean fawned over the financier. “I think most people are just resigned to the fact that nothing will happen,” Sutherland says, pointing to “an argument that their communications were purely for [DiChristina’s] work at Scientific American.”
In the statement that BU’s executive director of media relations, Colin Riley, shared with WIRED on DiChristina’s behalf, he explained that “she engaged with hundreds of individuals who contacted the publication” and that it was “routine practice to correspond and talk to people who expressed interest in science.” DiChristina did not personally respond to a request for comment from WIRED.
Meanwhile, campus protests have gained more traction at Bard College, whose president of more than half a century, Leon Botstein, was connected with Epstein while seeking means of financial stability for his small upstate New York liberal arts school.
“As I have said for years, engaging with Jeffrey Epstein was in service of one agenda, which was fundraising for Bard,” he said in a statement shared with the media in early February. “These interactions happened over years when I invested enormous time transforming Bard’s financial footing through pursuing and securing major donations for the college.” Nevertheless, Botstein added, Epstein “was constantly intimating that he might make a major contribution, only to leave Bard empty-handed.”
The potential donor narrative has eroded somewhat in light of more personal correspondence Botstein had with Epstein long after the latter pleaded guilty to the state charges in Florida. The DOJ’s recent document dump included messages in which Botstein wrote “Miss you” to Epstein (2013) and coordinated on buying a rare collectible watch for $50,000 (2017). Epstein also networked with Botstein on behalf of Woody Allen and his wife Soon-Yi Previn about the possibility of one of the couple’s daughters enrolling at Bard. In 2012, Botstein’s office arranged plans for him to visit Epstein’s island. A spokesman for Botstein told the New York Times that he cannot recall if he ever went.
It’s unclear if a hazy memory will spare Botstein any consequences for his ties to Epstein going back more than a decade. On February 16, Bard College’s Board of Trustees reportedly convened an emergency meeting to discuss the matter. Neither Botstein nor Bard College returned requests for comment.
No ivory tower has proven more entangled with Epstein than the most prestigious in the nation: Harvard University. In 2020, the school revealed that it had received a total of $9.1 million in gifts from the financier between 1998 and 2008 as he sought to rub shoulders and peddle his influence. He was appointed a Visiting Fellow in Harvard’s Department of Psychology in 2005 but, per Harvard’s later investigation, “did very little to pursue his course of study.” Regardless, he was readmitted for a second year, then withdrew following his 2006 grand jury indictment. It was in 2008 that Harvard implemented a policy of refusing any further donations from him. It also rebuffed the efforts of some faculty to lift that ban in 2013, according to its 2020 report.
That may have spared the university from a number of embarrassing disclosures as more Epstein documents became public in the past year, but the financier’s footprint within Harvard was staggering nonetheless. In November, Larry Summers, the school’s former president, resigned from a number of high-profile appointments after the extent of his friendship with Epstein was made clear by a previous release of DOJ files—though he still holds the highest faculty honorific of University Professor. The following month, PBS dropped Poetry in America, a TV series from Summers’ wife, Harvard English professor emerita Elisa New, developed with a nonprofit that received a sizable donation from Epstein and was partially subsidized by the university. Summers and New visited Epstein’s island together on their 2005 honeymoon.
“I am deeply ashamed of my actions and recognize the pain they have caused,” Summers said in a statement to the Harvard Crimson in November as he withdrew from a number of organizations, including OpenAI, where he sat on the board. “I take full responsibility for my misguided decision to continue communicating with Mr. Epstein.” New told the Boston Globe that taking Epstein’s donation in 2016 “was deeply regrettable,” and that she was unaware of Harvard’s ban on gifts from him.
The Epstein documents released in January threw other Harvard faculty into the spotlight, including physicist Lisa Randall. They also reaffirmed Epstein’s association with Harvard mathematics and biology professor Martin Nowak; the university had already sanctioned him in 2021 for violating codes of professional conduct through his involvement with Epstein and closed down his Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, which received $6.5 million from Epstein in 2003. Both Randall and Nowak met with Epstein in person and continued to correspond with him for years after he pleaded guilty to sex crimes in Florida and was officially prohibited from donating to Harvard. Neither replied to a request for comment; nor did Summers or New.
Alex Bronzini-Vender, Harvard class of ’28 and a writer for the Crimson who last year coauthored an op-ed urging the university to fully cut ties with Summers, says that the unrest on campus is significant. “There’s been a sizable student movement against Epstein’s buddies,” he tells WIRED. “I’d say it’s the most visible student activism we’ve seen since the [pro-Palestine] encampments.” According to Bronzini-Vender, an organization called Epstein Off Campus picketed Nowak’s office in early February.
Harvard’s communications office did not reply to a request for comment. The university recently widened a probe into its links with Epstein, not only through faculty but unnamed donors. “I’ve spoken to very high-up administrators who find this to be as crazy and repulsive a story as we do,” says Bronzini-Vender. Summers’ case will show how far the school is willing to go, Bronzini-Vender says, because no one in the history of Harvard has been stripped of University Professor status. “It's never been revoked because there's never been a situation like this,” he says. “But if it's a discretionary honor, it should be removed.” Summers did not respond to a request for comment.
Elsewhere around the country, schools have taken a variety of measures against faculty who corresponded with Epstein. Yale University relieved computer science professor David Gelernter of teaching duties for the spring term a little over a week after his emails with Epstein surfaced—a ban that will remain in place as the university reviews his conduct. Gelernter did not return a request for comment. The Epstein disruptions have extended to major events as well: The University of Arizona canceled its 2026 Science of Consciousness Conference after multiple speakers and organizers appeared in Epstein documents.
And at Barnard College, dozens of faculty members signed an open letter that called for trustee Francine LeFrak to step down from its board, as multiple emails released by the DOJ mention her. (None, however, appear to show LeFrak and Epstein communicating directly.) In a statement to WIRED, LeFrak said, “I didn’t know this man whatsoever. I find what he did despicable, reprehensible, and against every principle I have ever fought for.” Barnard said in a statement shared with WIRED that “in an abundance of care, we have retained independent counsel to review the facts and advise the College accordingly” on any potential connection between Epstein and the school. That attorney is Joon Kim, who previously investigated allegations of sexual harassment against former New York governor Andrew Cuomo.
Eventually, the academic establishment may have to reckon with the very nature of how it courts and accepts the largesse of benefactors. As much as the Epstein saga is a story of systematic sexual abuse, it has meanwhile laid bare the workings of money and influence at the highest levels of society—including those hallowed places that imagine themselves above allegations of corruption.