Several top officials from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) said that the school made “significant” errors in “judgement” by taking $850,000 in contributions from Jeffrey Epstein, according to an internal review.
MIT asked law firm Goodwin Proctor to conduct an internal review, which was unveiled Friday, to “understand the origins, nature and extent of Jeffrey Epstein’s ties to MIT and learn from them,” President L. Rafael Reif announced in an email to the MIT community.
The report stated that Reif “had little knowledge” of the school’s acceptance of the gifts from Epstein, who was a convicted sex offender.
The findings from Goodwin Proctor’s report also found that the disgraced financier made ten donations to MIT amounting to $850,000 between 2002 and 2017.
Only $100,000 of the money was donated after Epstein’s 2008 conviction.
Professor Seth Lloyd and Media Lab Director Joichi Ito solicited the post-conviction donations, the New York Post reported. Ito resigned after word got out about the MIT donation scandal in August.
MIT’s executive committee explained in a written statement that its members were “disturbed” by Lloyd and Epstein’s interactions and asked Reif to consider “disciplinary measures.”
“The revelations that MIT had a donor relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted sex offender, have deeply shaken the MIT community,” the executive committee wrote in its statement reacting to the findings of the report.
The billionaire sex offender also reportedly visited MIT’s campus nine times.
MIT once gave Epstein a grapefruit-sized 3D-printed marble in exchange for his high-dollar contributions.
To save face, MIT said it would donate $850,000 to a charity that supports survivors of sexual abuse.
MIT is not the only university that received scrutiny for accepting money from the convicted pedophile. Harvard University accepted $8.9 million, and Stanford University once accepted a gift of $50,000 from Epstein.
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