XPost: alt.education, alt.politics.trump, alt.politics.republicans   
   XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, sac.politics   
   From: leroysoetoro@americans-first.com   
      
   https://hotair.com/ed-morrissey/2026/02/16/nyt-the-epstein-light-grenade-   
   hits-academia-n3811940   
      
   Couldn't happen to a more deserving institution. But even in the Ivy   
   League, it may still look more like Salem 1692 than actual justice.   
      
   Now that the Department of Justice has published files from all of the   
   investigations into Jeffrey Epstein, including a list of notable   
   correspondents and others connected to the sex offender, certain patterns   
   have become apparent. One big pattern is that people like money, and they   
   like to flatter people with money in hopes of getting it for themselves.   
   And who likes money most?   
      
   Well, politicians, but we knew that. Running a close second, however, are   
   university administrators and researchers. It turns out that Larry Summers   
   was hardly unique in Academia, according to the New York Times, although   
   others in the Ivy League may not have asked Epstein for seduction advice:   
      
   America’s colleges and universities are chronically searching for money, a   
   reality that brought academic leaders and researchers into both Jeffrey   
   Epstein’s orbit and his inbox. The schools had the prestige to lend him   
   legitimacy. Mr. Epstein had the money to bankroll projects.   
      
   It worked well for some, until it didn’t.   
      
   Mr. Epstein, who in 2019 died by suicide in the jail where he was being   
   held on sex trafficking charges, gave money, or simply dangled the   
   prospect of it, before people on a range of campuses, including Harvard,   
   M.I.T., Stanford, Bard College and Columbia.   
      
   Some schools have spent years trying to distance themselves from Mr.   
   Epstein, donating his contributions and condemning his crimes. But recent   
   document releases from the Justice Department have prompted new   
   recriminations and regrets.   
      
   Many academics whose names appear within the Epstein files say they turned   
   to him only because of his money and the possibility that it could   
   underwrite college budgets and research efforts — even if their exchanges   
   came after Mr. Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting prostitution   
   from a minor.   
      
   Not for the first time, I am reminded of the Light Grenade from the   
   terrible film Mom and Dad Save the World, which makes anyone who picks it   
   up disappear. The actor Jeffrey Jones got professionally disappeared in a   
   context not far removed from the same kind of issues surrounding Jeffrey   
   Epstein, ironically, but that's not the point. The Epstein Files and   
   Epstein's money are the Light Grenades here, and those who attempt to use   
   either or both are now starting to get disappeared too:   
      
   https://youtu.be/xTj9jYCiOlw   
      
   Jones' professional cratering was well deserved. So too was Summers', who   
   didn't just engage in fundraising contacts with Epstein but asked a   
   convicted sex offender to help Summers get a young female protegé   
   "horizontal."  However, it's not clear that this is true for all of the   
   academics appearing on the Epstein Files list. Most of them went looking   
   for just the money. While sucking up to a convicted sex offender for   
   funding the education of young adults is questionable, it is not at all   
   the same as participating in crimes.   
      
   There is an element of complicity in Epstein's attempts to rehab his   
   image, however. The NYT notes that Epstein almost certainly used his money   
   to force money-hungry academics to participate in that effort:   
      
   Mr. Botstein said in 2023 that Mr. Epstein “enjoyed humiliating and   
   dangling prospects” and had “absolutely strung me along.” Others have   
   wondered whether he luxuriated in conversations with some of the world’s   
   brightest minds. Many also believe that Mr. Epstein sought to leverage   
   academia’s reputation to clean up his own.   
      
   For example, a Harvard professor, whose program received millions from Mr.   
   Epstein, greenlit proposals made by the financier’s publicist to feature   
   Mr. Epstein on a university website. In a report Harvard issued in 2020,   
   the university said the requests “appeared to be part of a larger effort   
   to rehabilitate” Mr. Epstein’s image. (The university also noted that Mr.   
   Epstein’s foundation’s website overstated its gifts to Harvard by tens of   
   millions of dollars.)   
      
   “Having one of these universities as part of your philanthropic portfolio   
   adds a tremendous amount of credibility, and I think that’s what a   
   university should be worried about: Is an unsavory character using me to   
   whitewash a lifestyle?" said Nicholas S. Zeppos, a former Vanderbilt   
   University chancellor.   
      
   Well ... duh. But as Dean Martin (Ned Beatty) said in Back to School, in   
   Harvard's defense ... it was a really big check:   
      
   https://youtu.be/Yo1-WdxQnK8   
      
   The problem is that not everyone's contact with Epstein was equally   
   malign, or even in the same class as Prince Andrew, Bill Clinton in the   
   Tubba Bubba shot, or even Summers. Most of these were normal   
   business/social contacts among the elites, which certainly can be   
   criticized but hardly warrant professional death penalties. Joe Nocera   
   writes about the Salem 1692 quality of the spiraling public fallout at the   
   Free Press, where even a mention in the files brings assumptions of   
   participation in Epstein's crimes:   
      
    I’ve been appalled by the way so many people in public life—people like   
   former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers—remained close to him, undeterred   
   by the knowledge of his past conviction. In fact, what is most appalling   
   is the realization that some of these people likely knew what he was still   
   doing, post-prison, with the young girls he solicited for “massages.”   
   Writer Michael Wolff and former Obama administration lawyer Kathryn   
   Ruemmler went so far as to strategize with Epstein in the months before he   
   was arrested in 2019. On Thursday, Ruemmler resigned as Goldman Sachs’   
   general counsel, a position she had held since 2020. Some Epstein fallout   
   is well-deserved.   
      
   But there is also a degree of hysteria that has overtaken the coverage of   
   the Epstein files. Anyone—literally anyone—who is mentioned, no matter   
   what the context, is assumed to be an Epstein friend, and thus worthy of   
   scorn or worse.   
      
   Scorn is fine. Professional destruction is another thing entirely. Nocera   
   agrees:   
      
   Distinctions between the truly culpable and those who are merely   
   bystanders are being lost in the lust to point fingers. Epstein was a   
   terrible criminal, but not everyone he came in contact with should have   
   their lives upended because they once knew him or Maxwell. It’s time to   
   restore some sanity to the “Epstein fallout.”   
      
   Well, why hasn't sanity prevailed all along? Because people want to use   
   the Epstein files in the same way others wanted to use Epstein himself –   
   for their own ambitions and purposes. They have stoked the witch hunt in   
   the expectation that their opponents would get strung up on the figurative   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)