Leon Botstein, Bard College’s pioneering Jewish president, to retire amid Jeffrey Epstein ties
Botstein will continue to live and work on campus, he told the community
Leon Botstein leading the American Symphony Orchestra in Johann Christian Bach’s “Symphony in G minor” in the program “Sons of Bach” at Alice Tully Hall on Thursday night, December 19, 2019 in New York, NY. (Hiroyuki Ito/Getty Images)
(JTA) — Leon Botstein will end his half-century tenure as president of Bard College following an investigation commissioned by the school into his ties to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, the school’s Board of Trustees announced late Friday.
“Nothing that President Botstein did in connection with his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein was illegal, but President Botstein made decisions in the course of that relationship that reflect on his leadership of Bard,” the board wrote in the summary of the report it released Friday.
Botstein, who is Jewish and one of the longest-serving college presidents in U.S. history, is a former director of the Jerusalem symphony who was named for an uncle who perished in the Warsaw Ghetto.
Even as others with Epstein ties were forced to resign from their roles or apologize, Botstein evaded consequences for years. But after a tranche of files were released in January, revealing new details about Botstein’s ties to Epstein, Bard commissioned the law firm WilmerHale to investigate Botstein’s conduct.
The investigation found that Botstein had “minimized and was not fully accurate” about his ties to Epstein. The investigation revealed that Botstein had made 25 different visits to Epstein’s townhouse in New York City as well as a two-day trip to his island that Botstein had previously said he could not recall. In addition, Epstein brought women to events on Bard’s campus, but Botstein said he did not wonder whether the women were in any danger, despite knowing that Epstein was a convicted sex offender, according to the summary report.
At least one unnamed senior faculty member had balked at Botstein’s efforts to pursue Epstein funding, says the WilmerHale report. The investigators said they concluded that Botstein was willing to make compromises to secure funding for the college he took over when he was 28.
“President Botstein forcefully argues that Bard’s need for funds was paramount. His view was, ‘I would take money from Satan if it permitted me to do God’s work.’”
Bard’s Board of Trustees announced Botstein’s retirement alongside the release of the investigation summary on Friday. “The Board is grateful to President Botstein for his five decades of service to Bard College, his countless accomplishments and the lasting impact of his leadership,” it said, adding that planning for the school’s future would include shoring up policies on “donor vetting, fundraising, and conflicts of interest.”
Reached for comment, Botstein’s office shared a letter to the Bard community that Botstein sent on Friday. In the email, without mentioning Epstein specifically, he said he had previously intended to retire but wanted to wait for the WilmerHale report to be completed before making the announcement. He also said he would continue to teach and live on campus following his retirement as president on June 30.
“We should all remember that through our collective work Bard has defied the fate of many smaller institutions of higher education, and has overcome its long history of financial instability and poverty to become a college of national and global prominence, known especially for its devotion to liberal education and to public service,” Botstein said in the letter. “Bard’s success in that defiance has derived from its commitment to innovation and excellence, not the opposite.”
Among Botstein’s initiatives at Bard has been leading a student orchestra that last year performed at Nuremberg, on the site of Hitler’s rallies there, as a statement against authoritarianism.
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