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Bard College president steps down, months after his deep ties to Jeffrey Epstein were revealed | Fortune
The longtime president of Bard College announced his retirement Friday, months after it was revealed that he had a much deeper relationship with Jeffrey Epstein than was previously known. Leon Botstein, who has been president of the small, liberal arts college inn New York for a half century, will retire at the end of June, he wrote in an email provided to The Associated Press by Bard. In the note, Botstein, 79, didn’t mention the scrutiny of his ties to Epstein, except to say that he had waited to announce his retirement publicly until the completion of an independent review of his relationship with the notorious sex offender. He said he would remain on Bard’s faculty as a teacher and musician. Botstein was not accused of any involvement in Epstein’s exploitation and abuse of girls and women. But he was among a long list of prominent and notable men and women who maintained friendly relationships with him for years, despite his status as a convicted sex offender. A trove of documents released by the U.S. Justice Department this year showed that Botstein and Epstein had met on multiple occasions, with Epstein sometimes arriving at Bard by helicopter. The president had
Bard president Leon Botstein stepping down after inquiry into his Epstein ties
Leon Botstein has announced he is stepping down from the helm of Bard College, after an independent review of his contacts with Jeffrey Epstein found the college president’s frequent interactions with the convicted sex offender “could have alerted” him to the possibility that he and Bard would be facilitating Epstein’s abuse of women.An investigation by the WilmerHale law firm, which had been commissioned by Bard’s board of trustees earlier this year to review Botstein’s interactions with Epstein, found the Bard president – who had previously claimed he was not friends with Epstein – made about 25 visits to Epstein’s townhouse, a two-day visit to Epstein’s Little St James Island, and that there were two visits by Epstein to Bard. These visits, WilmerHale reported, included “multiple women” who have since been identified as victims of Epstein.Epstein and Botstein, who has not been charged with wrongdoing in connection with his relationship with the accused sex trafficker, were in contact from 2012 to 2019.The WilmerHale review also suggested that Botstein had been warned by a senior faculty member that he should not engage with Epstein, who the president was courting as a donor to the college. The report by Wilmer Hale found that
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