The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab worked to conceal the extent of its fund-raising relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, which generated millions more than previously disclosed, according to the New Yorker.
E-mails and other documents obtained by the magazine show the Media Lab kept accepting gifts from Epstein after his incarceration in the mid-2000s — even though a university database marked him as disqualified — and listed them as anonymous, the magazine reported Friday.
The director of the lab stepped down on Saturday after outcry over his financial connections to Epstein, the New York Times reported.
“After giving the matter a great deal of thought over the past several days and weeks, I think that it is best that I resign as director of the media lab and as a professor and employee of the Institute, effective immediately,” the director, Joichi Ito, wrote in an email to the university’s provost, Martin A. Schmidt.
Records show Epstein, who died in a federal detention center in Manhattan in August, was credited with winning at least $2 million in donations from Microsoft founder Bill Gates and $5.5 million from investor Leon Black, the New Yorker said. Efforts to conceal the lab’s relationship with Epstein were so well-known that some staffers referred to him as Voldemort, or “he who must not be named,” a reference to the villain in Harry Potter books and movies. – READ MORE