Jeffrey Epstein’s Donations Create a Schism at M.I.T.’s Revered Media Lab - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/05/business/media/mit-media-lab-jeffrey-epstein-joichi-ito.html
Joichi Ito gave himself some advice in 2008: “Reminder to self,” he wrote on Twitter. “Don’t invest with or take money from creeps,” although he used an earthier term.
Then, over the next decade, he accepted about $1.7 million from Jeffrey Epstein.
That money from Mr. Epstein, the disgraced financier who killed himself in jail last month while facing federal sex-trafficking charges, was split between Mr. Ito’s own investment funds and the prestigious center he leads at M.I.T., the Media Lab. His apology last month prompted two academics to announce plans to leave and led to calls for Mr. Ito to step down from the lab, an institution that is proudly indifferent to scholarly credentials and seeks a future marrying technology and social conscience.
On Wednesday, at a meeting billed in an email as the start of “a process of dialogue and recovery” that two attendees said had begun with a group breathing exercise, the rift was unexpectedly pulled open just as it appeared to be closing.
Roughly 200 people gathered to address the lingering anger at Mr. Ito — a tech evangelist whose networking skills landed him in the White House to discuss artificial intelligence with President Barack Obama and prompted the psychedelic proselytizer Timothy Leary to call him his godson. Mr. Ito, who has helped the lab raise at least $50 million, revealed that he had taken $525,000 from Mr. Epstein for the lab and $1.2 million for his own investment funds.
Nicholas Negroponte, a prominent architect who helped found the lab in 1985, told the crowd that he had met Mr. Epstein at least once since Mr. Epstein’s 2008 guilty plea in Florida for soliciting a minor for prostitution, and had advised Mr. Ito about the donations.
“I told Joi to take the money,” he said, “and I would do it again.”
The words stunned the crowd, just before the meeting adjourned. Mr. Ito saw the comments as so damaging to his conciliatory efforts that he fired off a message to Mr. Negroponte just after midnight. “After I spent 1.5 hours apologizing and asking permission to make amends, you completely undermined me,” Mr. Ito wrote in the email, which was reviewed by The New York Times.
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