CAMBRIDGE, Mass. First to fall for his connections to Jeffrey Epstein was Lawrence Summers, former President of Harvard and advisor to Presidents Clinton and Obama, who announced Wednesday that he would retire from the school at the end of the academic year. Still waiting for the other shoe to drop are math professor Martin Nowak, who spent time on Epstein’s private island with a woman Epstein procured for him, and George Church, a professor considered a pioneer in genetic research, who hosted Epstein in his lab for gatherings of a group known as “the boys.”
“For a mere $9 million donation, they gave me this bitchin’ cool fleece pullover!”
There are others at Harvard whose ties to Epstein have drawn attention, including Alan Dershowitz, a professor emeritus at the law school, and David Gergen a professor at its graduate school of government until his death in 2025, leading some to ask whether there is anyone at the nation’s oldest institution of higher learning who was not on the take from the convicted sex offender. “I’d say maybe ‘Chick’ Stallings, the janitor at the squash courts,” says “prediction market” specialist Evan Slattersky, “but I wouldn’t bet your retirement money on it.”
“Ethics is very simple. Do what makes you the most money and you’ll never go wrong.”
While the scandal has other prestigious academic institutions licking their chops at the prospect of snatching faculty and funding from Harvard, one lesser school views the crisis as an opportunity. “We’ll have the best ethics in the world,” said President Donald Trump at a news conference announcing the revival of Trump University, a non-accredited company founded in 2004 that ceased operations in 2011 after it was hit with a number of lawsuits and investigations. “Our three and five-day seminars come complete with a complimentary continental breakfast, cool swag, and a bevy of former beauty queen runners-up.”
John Harvard statue: “Woo–what a mess!”
State government officials in Massachusetts are required by law to take annual ethics exams on an open-book, pass-fail basis, with extra time available for those who move their lips while reading. While Harvard is written into the Massachusetts constitution and for much of its history received funding from the state, its professors are not required to be ethical as long as they bring in enough grant funding.
Trump U’s business model was criticized even by conservative publication National Review as a “massive scam,” but Trump compared it favorably to Harvard, whose annual tuition of $64,796 is 37.5% higher than the national average. “We cram a helluva lot of ethics into a three-day course for $1,500,” he said, noting that philosophy professors at Harvard make between $120,000 and $240,000 annually. “I can get guys who are just as ethical for half that price, plus health and dental, and they don’t wear those goofy sport coats with the elbow patches.”
Still, the decline of one of the most prestigious institutions in the northeast is a cause of sadness for many, who bask in the reflected glory of its reputation. “It is indeed a tragedy,” says Oswald Thurston III, an investment advisor, “unless like me you’re a Yale man.”