Many of Jeffrey Epstein’s ties to prominent universities and academics, which he maintained through monetary donations and luxury gifts, have been known since his 2019 arrest and suicide in a Manhattan jail cell. After the US Justice Department published 3 million new documents related to criminal investigations of the late sex trafficker last month, however, it became clear that his influence in higher education was far more sweeping.
As a result of email exchanges included in this new tranche of files, several professors and university administrators have found themselves publicly associated with Epstein for the first time, and caught in a maelstrom of angry students, alumni, and colleagues.
Merely appearing in files doesn’t implicate someone in any alleged criminality, but the turmoil over these interactions has touched all manner of campuses, from small arts schools to major public universities and the Ivy League. The faculty members who cultivated relationships with Epstein, suddenly called to account, have largely insisted that they only saw him as a deep-pocketed donor only inviting further controversy over the financial ethics of US academia.
At the School of Visual Arts in New York, for example, flyers declaring “ONE OF YOUR TEACHERS IS IN THE FILES” and “SVA WANTS NO TIES WITH EPSTEIN” appeared on campus bulletin boards in the wake of the latest DOJ release. The posters displayed emails between Epstein and David A. Ross, the school’s MFA Art Practice program chair and former director of multiple contemporary art museums, from October 2009, more than a year after Epstein pleaded guilty in Florida to solicitation of prostitution and of procurement of minors to engage in prostitution. In one of those exchanges, Epstein floated the idea for an art exhibition titled “Statutory,” featuring “girls and boys ages 14 – 25.. where they look nothing like their true ages.” Epstein further explained, “Some people go to prison because they can’t tell true age. controversial . fun.” Ross replied, “You are incredible. This would be a very owerful [sic] and freaky book.”
The poster campaign was how some on campus first learned of the Ross-Epstein relationship. A current SVA student who requested anonymity out of concern for actions the school might take against them said they only became aware that Ross was in the Epstein files when they saw the flyers. (This individual also shared photos of two different bulletins about Ross with WIRED.) “I would like to see [the school administration] do an audit of all the MFA chairs,” they say.
Another current SVA student who also requested anonymity due to their employment by the school tells WIRED that campus security removed some of the flyers about Ross. “I am a student worker, and my boss has been telling my coworkers to take down flyers to avoid getting in trouble with the administration,” they say. That didn’t necessarily stop chatter around the school. (SVA did not respond to a question as to whether campus staff were instructed to remove the posters about Ross’ emails with Epstein.)
This student regards the Epstein-Ross correspondence not as a scandal specific to SVA but “emblematic of things wrong with the art world and higher education as a whole,” both of which are “saturated with people with money and connections.” They believe that “the true extent of [Epstein’s] influence is much larger than what we can read in the files.”
Ross resigned his position at SVA on February 3, saying in a statement to the New York Times that he met Epstein in the 1990s as director of the Whitney Museum of American Art. “I knew him as a wealthy patron and collector, and it was part of my job to befriend people who had the capacity and interest in supporting the museum,” he wrote. Ross explained that he believed Epstein’s account of his Florida conviction was a “political frame-up.” When Epstein was again under investigation, this time for the alleged sex trafficking of minors, Ross reached out in support, which he called “a terrible mistake of judgment” in his statement, saying he later felt “ashamed that I fell for his lies.”
