As a federal court continues to unseal records related to Jeffrey Epstein, the files are resurfacing the names of the sex-trafficker’s Harvard connections.
The legal filings are part of Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre’s 2015 defamation lawsuit against British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, the sex offender’s procurer of girls and young women. A judge began releasing the confidential documents on a rolling basis in 2019, revealing accusations of sexual abuse against Epstein’s powerful pals.
While the perverted financier’s Harvard ties have been previously reported, the pleadings highlight his extensive Crimson associations, including former Treasury secretary and Harvard President Emeritus Larry Summers; professor and former White House adviser David Gergen; and geneticist George Church, to whom Epstein facilitated a $2 million donation from billionaire Leon Black.
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The records also mention biology and mathematics professor Martin Nowak, who received $6.5 million from Epstein and $7 million from Black to fund a research facility. (Nowak was put on leave after the university found that Epstein used the academic’s Program for Evolutionary Dynamics to “rehabilitate his image.”)
In a declaration filed in court, Harvard lawyer Alan Dershowitz—who was fighting claims of abuse from Giuffre—stated, “I never had sexual contact with Ms. Giuffre of any kind, and, to my knowledge, I never even met her until her deposition in 2016.”
Dershowitz went on to address Giuffre’s prior claims that “academicians” linked to Epstein assaulted her and targeted claims from one of her lawyers, Paul Cassell.
“As Mr. Cassell is well aware, Jeffrey Epstein was heavily involved in funding academic research at Harvard and kept an office there, and he was consequently friendly with many academics, including David Gergen, [MIT’s] Marvin Minsky, Larry Summers, Stephen Kosslyn, Henry Rosovsky, Howard Gardner, and Stephen Jay Gould, among others,” Dershowitz stated.
“Many of these academics engaged in the same behavior that apparently led Mr. Cassell to believe Ms. Giuffre’s allegations that I had abused her.”
“All of the ‘evidence’ that Ms. Giuffre and her lawyers claim implicates me,” Dershowitz continued, “is equally applicable to dozens of other academics and public figures who were associated with Mr. Epstein.” He then listed other academics: Stephen Hawking, Nathan Myhrvold, Steven Pinker, Daniel C. Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Gerard ‘t Hooft, David Gross, and Frank Wilzek.
Dershowitz, who settled a separate defamation suit with Giuffre in 2022, then pointed to the manuscript for the victim’s memoir, which was also released in Epstein document dumps and apparently claimed she was forced to have sex with a Harvard professor who was not Dershowitz.
“Two weeks later, as if Jeffrey was trying to lighten my spirits, he told me I would be going to his island to meet a new client,” the manuscript read.
“I would be spending two days with him showing him around the island, dining with him, and treating him to a massage whenever he wanted. Without Jeffrey even verbalizing the need to have sex with him, he told me to keep him happy like I had my first client…”
Dershowitz stated that in a deposition, Giuffre “later denied having sex with” with the other Harvard academic.
“Ms. Giuffre has also claimed to have had sex with such prominent individuals,” Dershowitz added, including Minsky, the late former Governor of New Mexico Bill Richardson, Hyatt hotels chairman Tom Pritzker, the former Prime Minister of Israel Ehud Barak, and Britain’s Prince Andrew. (Minsky died in 2016, but the other men have denied her claims.)
Meanwhile, Epstein referred at least one Harvard connection as a client to JPMorgan, according to court papers filed last year in a lawsuit against the bank.
Summers was named along with other wealthy referrals including billionaire Glenn Dubin, Bill Gates, Pritzker, and Mort Zuckerman. (A Gates spokesperson says, however, that the Microsoft honcho was never a JPMorgan client.)
The Daily Beast previously reported that Epstein donated to the Cambridge, Massachusetts nonprofit of Summers’ wife, Harvard professor Elisa New.
Summers solicited the funds on New’s behalf, the Wall Street Journal reported last year, and was scheduled to attend more than a dozen meetings with Epstein between 2013 and 2016.
A spokeswoman for Summers told the Journal that he stopped accepting the sex offender’s money after his 2008 conviction for soliciting sex from an underage girl. She said: “Their interactions primarily focused on global economic issues.”
In a May 2020 report on its relationship with Epstein, Harvard said it received more than $9 million from the sex-trafficker before his 2008 conviction for soliciting minors.
“Harvard accepted no gifts from Epstein after his 2008 conviction,” the report claimed.
