Bard President received $150,000 from Foundation founded by Jeffrey Epstein
Leon Botstein, the president of Bard College, personally received $150,000 in 2016 for counseling fees from a foundation set up by Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced billionaire accused of sexually assaulting teenage girls. This is reported by the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday.
In a brief interview with The New York Times, Dr. Botstein accepted the payment from the foundation, Gratitude America, and said he donated it all to the college as part of a $1 million gift he gave that same year.
Dr. Botstein, 76, said the rest of his donation to the university came from his personal savings and earnings. He has been president of Bard College since 1975 and earned approximately $400,000 in 2016.
“I personally didn’t benefit from it at all,” he said. The money he received from Mr. Epstein’s foundation, he said, “made it possible for me to give as much as we could give that year” to the college.
He added: “I am not a rich person.”
Dr. Botstein had previously said that, other than an unsolicited gift of $75,000 and 66 laptops, Mr Epstein had not given any gifts to Bard.
Dr. Botstein said during an interview with The Times earlier this month on Wednesday that he did not disclose the foundation’s money because he was unaware of it. He said that “the contract was signed by someone else”, so Mr Epstein’s name did not appear in his records. He said he couldn’t remember the 2016 payments until he investigated the matter after being asked by The Wall Street Journal.
Bard College said in a statement that Dr. Botstein donated the $150,000 as part of his “2016 annual gift to Bard, along with personal savings and the remainder of his non-Bard income from professional fees and outside conducting fees, a practice he has maintained for many years.”
It is unclear whether the board of Bard College was aware of this payment. Attempts to interview James Chambers, the chairman of the board, and other trustees were unsuccessful.
The payment is the latest revelation that digs deeper into how Mr. Epstein used his money to buy influence. Mr. Epstein gave generously to many charities and universities, including Harvard and MIT
A report in The Wall Street Journal last month showed that Mr. Epstein’s network was broader than previously thought, including such figures as the linguist Noam Chomsky and Lawrence Summers, the former Secretary of the Treasury and President of Harvard. Dr. Summers sought funding for a poetry foundation run by his wife, Elisa New, a professor of literature at Harvard.
Dr. Botstein repeatedly pursued Mr. Epstein over a period of several years, making numerous visits to Mr. Epstein’s Upper East Side mansion. Mr Botstein said those visits were all about money for Bard, a liberal arts college that relies heavily on wealthy donors.
“He enjoyed humiliating and dangling prospects,” Dr. Botstein told The Times earlier this month. “He was sadistic. He absolutely kept me on a leash.”
But in a statement on Wednesday, the college said Mr Epstein expressed interest in Bard and Dr. Botstein, a conductor, introduced to Gratitude America, which had formed an advisory board of experts from a variety of disciplines.
The foundation’s president, Richard Kahn — a longtime adviser to Mr. Epstein and an executor of his estate — invited Dr. Botstein to serve a one-year term as a music advisor on the advisory board, the statement said. Mr Kahn did not respond to messages with phone numbers and an email address attached to his name.
The college’s statement added: “Had the magnitude and horror of Epstein’s crimes been known, Bard would not have accepted his support.”