Reputation for sale, Part Two

I’m an MIT alum. No, not a real alum. That honor goes to those brass rat ring-wearing folks who got their undergraduate degree from the ‘tute. The only relationship I had with MIT as an undergrad was that I worked one year as a grill cook/soda jerk in Twenty Chimneys, the campus snack bar.

No, I’m an alum courtesy of their business school. And even though I know that, to insiders, my MIT degree is the equivalent of a certificate in basket weave, it means something to outsiders, conferring intelligence, attainment, and seriousness of purpose. In other words, a good brand. And I’m proud of my association with this institution.

That said, I’ve donated very rarely, and very little over the years – maybe $1K total, maybe $2K. And mostly when the class agent called me directly during a reunion year. Certainly not much by MIT’s standards.

My rationale has been that there are better places for me to place my philanthropic dollar and, besides, MIT surely has bigger donor trees to bark up: grads who’ve made it big, foundations, those who just want to be associated with MIT’s luster…

Ah, but that latter category is where MIT is running into trouble…

It may not be in the news worldwide, but the Boston papers have been all astir with the revelation the late and nowhere as far as I can tell lamented Jeffrey Epstein donated oodles of money on the down low over the years to MIT’s Media Lab.

Now Media Lab doesn’t sound like much. Glorified AV Club? Students playing around with social media?

But it’s pretty prestigious, and kind of a big deal.

Here’s how they talk about themselves:

The Lab creates disruptive technologies that happen at the edges, pioneering such areas as wearable computing, tangible interfaces, and affective computing….

…for over 30 years Media Lab researchers have anticipated and created technologies to make our lives safer, cleaner, healthier, fairer, and more productive. But along with benefits, technology’s everyday efficiencies have also brought their share of issues: obesity, poverty, ethical implications, bullying, divergent politics. The Media Lab’s antidisciplinary research community is uniquely equipped to address these concerns, leveraging the best that technology has to offer, and connecting technology back to the social and the human. Current Lab research examines the deeper implications of where technology creation and adoption has led us—and where we want to go next. (Source: MIT Media Lab)

A mouthful, for sure, and you can see that they’re plenty high on themselves.

They’ve had some reason to be.

I’ve heard big machers from the Lab speak a number of times over the years, and what they have to say has always been fascinating.

But it might be time to start thinking about the ethical implications of their donor practices.

Here’s what’s been happening re: Jeffrey Epstein.

The MIT Media Lab had been taking quite a bit of money from Jeffrey Epstein, and had been using his help to woo in other big-donors.

They did this on the condition that Epstein not be allowed to take public credit for the donations, and use his philanthropy as part of a reputation rehabilitation tour after his earlier sex crimes conviction. But MIT was plenty happy to take his money.

First indications were that the Media Lab had gone rogue, acting on their own to secure the money and covering things up as “anonymous” donations. Joi Ito, head of the Lab, was forced out.

But according to e-mails that circulated in 2014 and 2015 among university officials, at least two top MIT fund-raisers, along with a finance department administrator, were aware of Epstein’s involvement in the Media Lab and knew that his donations were to be treated as anonymous in the university’s donor tracking system. (Source: Boston Globe)

We learned this thanks to a whistle blower.

But wait, there’s more. There’s always more.

The other day, in an email sent to all alums, MIT President Rafael Reif informed us that the school had retained Goodwin Procter (big time Boston law firm) to figure out what had been going on between MIT and Epstein.

Turns out one of the things they found out was the Reif himself, shortly after he became president, had signed a TY note to Epstein.

Now, Reif was probably signing a stack of letters, and I’m pretty sure that this will turn out to be 100% innocent. Pretty sure. But it does add further embarrassment, when there’s already enough of that to go around.

I know I’ve already said this, but wait, there’s more. There’s always more.

Neri Oxman is an architect/designer/professor associated with the Media Lab. A few years back, her group got a relatively modest (or so it appears at this time) donation from Epstein. $125K. In keeping with the MIT omerta regarding Epstein, she was told to keep it under wraps. Oxman has also stated:

“Joi [Ito] assured me that Epstein was an approved donor who wished to devote his fortune to science and technology, in part to make amends for wrongs he committed earlier in his life.” (Source: Boston Globe)

In return for the donations, Oxman was asked to write thank you notes to Epstein.

Then Ito upped the ante. He:

…requested that her design lab, which often produced donor gifts for the university, send a token of appreciation to Epstein: a grapefruit-sized, 3-D printed marble with a base that lit up. It came with a pair of gloves to avoid getting fingerprints on the surface.She complied, and asked lab members to mail it to Epstein’s Manhattan address.

So now there are students lightly implicated – and ticked off. They felt pressured to work on the grapefruit-sized 3-D printed marble with the light up base, even though at least one of them knew Epstein was a sleaze. She pushed back initially, but in the end gave in to the pressure.

Oxman was also feeling pressured:

At the time, she was trying to win tenure in a male-dominated world by showing she could publish significant research, produce enough groundbreaking work, and raise enough money to support the lab’s mission. Oxman became a tenured professor in 2017.

I know I’ve already said this, but wait, there’s more. There’s always more.

Oxman’s husband is Bill Ackman, a hedge-fund billionaire.

He jumped in at some point, writing to Ito about how worried he was that Oxman would:

“be forced into a position where to protext her name she is required to be transparent about everything that took place at MIT with Epstein.”

“Once her name appears in the press, she will face a barrage of questions, and anything other than perfect transparency to the media will make her look like she is hiding something. This has regretfully become a witch hunt.”

As, in fact, has happened, although I don’t necessarily see that going after those who benefited from Epstein’s donations even though they knew he was a truly depraved individual should be categorized as a witch hunt. Sometimes there are actually witches worth hunting.

I’m sorry to see MIT caught up in this. (I’d so much rather it be Harvard…) But you take dirty money, your hands don’t stay clean. The fact that MIT wanted to keep the Epstein money quiet tells us all we need to know.

Betcha it won’t be too long before I get to, once again, write ‘but wait, there’s more.’

There’s always more.