Epstein & MIT

Through deeply reported narrative-driven stories, we're digging into the myths, scandals, and power structures that still shape the south, in in a lot of ways, the country itself. Follow and listen to gone south season 5, an Odyssey podcast, available now on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your shows. This episode marks the end of our first season of campus files.

“From secret societies to shadowy scandals, we've dug into the stories you won't hear about on the campus tour, and none of it would have been possible without you.”

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Your story might be the next one we dig into. And if you're new, or just want a refresher, now's the perfect time to binge season 1. There's a whole archive of campus secrets waiting for you. At MIT, there's a research lab unlike most on college campuses, a place specifically designed to push boundaries and explore radical ideas from flying robots to foldable cars. It's called the Media Lab.

In 2018, the Media Lab held an award ceremony that embodied its unconventional spirit. The prize was called the Disobedience Award, a celebration of those who've bent or broken rules in the service of society.

“We are honoring some remarkable women here today, and many of those women are involved with one of the most important movements of our time.”

That year, the lab chose to honor the founders of the MeToo movement.

Activists whose work had toppled powerful men, upended industries, and sparked a global reckoning with sexual assault and sexual harassment.

It's becoming something that we are now talking about, and we are talking about, due to the bravery of the extraordinary women who we are honoring today. What almost no one in the audience knew was that the very institution celebrating the MeToo founders was at the same time quietly accepting donations from a person convicted of multiple sacrifices. Just think about how it felt for them when the scandal happened. How humiliating that must have been for them, and how disgusting that reality was when they'd just been applauded and awarded at the very institution

that was prioritizing Jeff Epstein over its own students. As it turned out, Jeffrey Epstein was not a one-off donor.

He was critical to the MeToo lab's fundraising apparatus.

It broke my heart, and then I got so angry. I got very, very angry.

“I'm Margot Gray, this week on campus files, MIT Media Labs secret ties to Jeffrey Epstein.”

In the 1980s, MIT professor Nicholas Negerponte looked around his university and saw a problem. Academic departments were completely siloed. Computer scientists spoke only to other computer scientists, artists, only to artists. To Negerponte, this wasn't just inefficient. It was stifling innovation.

He believed that real breakthroughs happened when disciplines collide. So in 1985, he partnered with MIT's president to try something radical. They founded the Media Lab. His original concept was that MIT Media Lab would be an interdisciplinary research lab comprised of labs now with different fields of focus. This is Kim Holman.

She spent four years at the Media Lab from 2013 to 2017. Her training in art, architecture, and engineering made her a natural fit for this kind of interdisciplinary work. You have the best of the best in every field, working side by side with other experts who are the best of the best in their field, as well as the brightest students in the world. And because of that, you can cross-pollinate between these incredible people.

For Negerponte, it wasn't just about chasing breakthroughs. His vision was much larger than that.

“He wanted to create a lab that would invent the future itself.”

The Media Lab. Welcome to a place where the future is lived, not imagined. Complex puzzles are solved. New businesses are incubated. A better future is invented together with the Media Lab.

The Media Lab's first members included some of the biggest names in computer science.

Among them, Marvin Minski, a pioneer of artificial intelligence. Almost immediately, the Media Lab gained a reputation for pushing the boundaries of technology. One early project captured that spirit, fish wrap, a prototype newspaper that personalized stories to a reader's individual interests. The research within these walls is inspired by our lives outside of them. The Media Lab.

“The Media Lab building itself is a gorgeous work of architecture.”

It's a multi-story building with an open floor plan. So it's not unusual to have two or three or four labs in each floor working side by side. So on any given day, you can just take a walk and see something that is mind-blowing. And some kind of innovation, like a bionic leg made out of some new kind of structural glass or there are some sort of self-assembling robots that you find out later are built out of cellulose.

To make it all possible, the Media Lab needed more than just talent. It needed money and a lot of it. At first, Neckroponte turned to the National Science Foundation for Fundate. His grant application was rejected, a setback that would define the Media Lab's approach to funding going forward. His philosophy was that he didn't want to have to go beg or apply or be reviewed or have to pass some sort of test in order to get funding.

“So what he does, he turned to private funding so that he could go directly and just simply get the money.”

Instead of competing for federal grants like other university labs, the Media Lab built its funding around a consortium of corporate sponsors from telecom giants to media companies. And each corporate sponsor paid an annual membership fee. And then they in return get access to all of the intellectual property, the demos, the data, the analysis, and all of the different work that's being done at Media Lab.

The benefit of this model was simple. Researchers no longer had to spend time chasing grants or worrying about the price tag of their far-flung ideas. Inside the bubble of each individual lab, all of the people who are there working on the projects, the students, the scholars, the visiting professionals, etc.

Never have any awareness or discussions about funding or fundraising.

We never had to think about funding and we were free to focus exclusively and completely on the research and the projects that we were creating. In many ways, the funding model was a stroke of genius. It freed researchers from endless grant writing and the corporate names attached to the lab boosted its prestige and profile. For the first decade, the money poured in and the budget grew by about 30% every year. But by the early 2000s, cracks were beginning to show. The dot-com bust and telecom crash made companies think twice about funding risky experiments.

Corporate sponsorships slowed and they couldn't keep up with the scale of faculty ambitions. So when the media lab began its search for a new director, one thing was clear. They needed someone who could fundraise. The person they found was Joy Eto. I have been named the new executive director of the MIT Media Lab, but I'm already kind of raising money and doing all the stuff.

You know, I'm going there every month. When Eto became director in 2011, he wasn't an obvious choice for the role.

He dropped out of college twice, didn't hold any degrees and had never run a lot before.

Not the typical credentials of an MIT faculty member. But Eto had something else to offer. Credibility and connections in the tech world. He invested early in companies like Twitter and Flicker and co-founded a venture firm in Tokyo. So while he may not have been in academic, he was a connector.

And just two years into his new role, he made a connection with someone who would reshape the media lab's future. Jeffrey Epstein

from efforts to control the weather that went disastrously awry to the untimely death of the Segway boss. History is a treasure trove, mishaps, and meltdowns that can teach us all. I'm Tim Harford, host of cautionary tales, the podcast that minds the greatest fiascoes of the past, for their most valuable lessons. Listen to cautionary tales, wherever you get your podcasts. Joy Eto became director of the Media Lab in 2011.

From the start, he pushed to expand fundraising from donors.

“Remember, unlike most university research labs, the Media Lab didn't run on federal grants.”

Its lifeblood was corporate sponsorships, and there was never enough money to cover all the ambitious projects

that researchers wanted to pursue. The fundraising team was new, and largely developed to supplement the annual corporate membership funds and to tap into the connections that the director of the lab had. This is Sydney Swenson. She was working in MIT's central fundraising office when in 2013, she heard about a new role at the Media Lab. Working in fundraising, you're often the person helping something cool happen and rarely the person participating in the cool thing. So when I heard of the job at the Media Lab, it felt like a way I could get closer to the excitement and the people who are making real breakthroughs and exciting inventions.

Sydney was excited to apply for the role, but one of her early interviews left her deeply uncomfortable.

“In the interview, Jeffrey Epstein's name was brought up, and I got the immediate sense that they were gauging my reaction.”

It was a test to see if I could do the work with some discretion. Jeffrey Epstein was a name Sydney already knew. During her time in MIT's central fundraising office, she'd seen him listed as a prospective donor. Once with every name, she did a quick Google search and what she found stunned her. Epstein was registered as a saxophender. In 2008, he'd pled guilty to two charges, soliciting prostitution and soliciting prostitution from a minor. Jeffrey Epstein went to jail just before 10 this morning. He pleaded guilty and opened court.

That doesn't feel like a one-off thing. It certainly made me think, well, this is just the thing he got caught for. And when I saw that, I said, no way, we should ever try to cultivate him for money.

“This person should be disqualified as a donor.”

But the Media Lab's leadership clearly didn't share her concerns. That became apparent in her interview when Epstein's involvement was brought up explicitly. And I was asked if I would be willing to do the work even though that was going to be part of the job. And I had rarely been brought in front of donors before. So I just assumed there's no way he's going to come to campus.

I won't be at an event he's at. And I said, as long as I don't have to be in the same room with him. And that was that. I passed the test. What Signe didn't realize was how often Epstein's name would surface in her new role. Eto was actively courting him as a donor.

The two men had first connected earlier that year at a TED conference in Long Beach, California.

For Eto, Epstein's appeal was obvious. He wasn't just wealthy. He was plugged into power. His circle included Bill Clinton, Donald Trump and Prince Andrew. And most importantly, he had a history of writing big checks to prestigious institutions. But what did Epstein get out of it? If you talk to reporters who covered him and look at the company he kept, a pattern emerges. Epstein seemed to crave attention from the world's intellectual elite.

For years, Harvard University had been his obsession. In fact, between 1998 and 2008, he donated more than $9 million to the university.

But after his 2008 conviction, Harvard stopped accepting his donations.

The challenge was keeping the partnership quiet.

“I think it was pretty early on when the conversations about how do we take Jeffrey Epstein's money?”

How do we make that happen without people outside of the lab finding out about that? I explained because I was the person with the experience and central fundraising. I knew that there were certain alerts that would happen when guests came in. And so I knew that we could not quietly take Jeffrey Epstein's money. Sydney is referring to automated emails that went out to fundraisers and admins when a large gift came in.

She soon learned that a workaround was being sorted out, though she didn't know who exactly was involved in that decision making. When the conversations were had, I was not in the room, but it was relayed to me that we aren't going to take large donations from Jeffrey. They were going to allow guests of 50,000 to 100,000.

These smaller gifts would be accepted anonymously. For added caution, Sydney was told to discuss anything related to Epstein and person never over email.

And to an ever-eat-home at with him, Epstein appeared on the calendar only by his initials.

“Jeffrey essentially became Voldemort, and that's how he would refer to him because, you know, don't talk about him, but an ever-present thing. To me, it felt like a lot of effort for someone we didn't want to be publicly associated with.”

But to Eto, the effort was worth it. Well, Epstein's own donations weren't especially large. He was providing access to a network of wealthy, well-connected donors. In fact, Sydney's as Epstein was credited with securing a $5 million gift from investor Leon Black, and another $2 million gift from Bill Gates. In one email, Eto spelled it out, this is a $2 million gift from Bill Gates, directed by Jeffrey Epstein.

All the while, Sydney was growing increasingly uneasy in her role, and she pushed back in whatever small way she could.

Part of my job was to help organize events that we would be at to try to cultivate people and get people to learn about the lab at Ted and at Formula One. And every time we would create invite lists for one of these events. Jeffrey Epstein's name was often included, and every time I would remove Jeffrey Epstein's name. And there were certain events where I would remove his name multiple times. And you know, if it was getting re-added, I knew it was not up to me, but wherever I had a small amount of power, I was going to do something with it.

But at the end of the day, there was only so much Sydney could do. The more I voiced my opposition to cultivating him, the less I was included in conversations and informed of what was going on. Sydney was powerless to stop what was happening. That became painfully clear in 2015 when she learned that Epstein would be coming to the media lab to meet with researchers.

“I think we all, uh, this was a step too far that it was an uncomfortable truth that he was being cultivated and involved in the lab in that way.”

But I think we all just knew there are people younger than 18 on this campus. And we believe this, I remember saying we are opening ourselves up to a loss soon. But the visit went ahead anyway. Sydney was unsettled to learn. It had been scheduled for a day when the one professor who objected to Epstein wouldn't be on campus. And then she heard about Epstein's request.

When we were planning the visit, I was informed one day that Jeffrey Epstein doesn't go anywhere without two young female assistants by his side. Certainly people will bring their assistant or someone from their team or their business. But to have it called out specifically that he has two young female assistants with him at all times. And he does not go into and run without them. That just set off alarms in my head.

This is so strange. Are these women here of their own free will? On the day of the visit, Epstein was supposed to slip in through a discrete side entrance. Instead, he walks straight through the front door. What unsettled Sydney and her female co-workers most was the sight of the assistants. So they went out of their way to be warm to the women and keep watch for any signs of distress.

There had been a news story of a flight attendant who had rescued a girl who was being trafficked by finding a napkin in the house. And so we went through the trash and looked at the napkins that they had thrown away.

I remember coming home the day of the visit telling my roommates that I just wished there was a way you could take a shower for your soul.

“I think I had been thinking about leaving before the visit happened, but that really pushed me to realize that this was not a good place for me.”

And I could feel myself physically deteriorating. Not long after, Sydney made the decision to leave her fundraising role. What she didn't realize was that her story with the media lab was nowhere near finished. It was almost over the street. The school of the school was just over the street, and then it was often stopped.

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It's just a studio, a job, or a house.

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[Music] By 2016, Signi had had enough. She left her role at the Media Lab and tried to get as far away as possible.

Ultimately, when I decided to leave, I just wanted to wash my hands of it,

and I moved out of state and decided no more fundraising jobs, and eventually no more nonprofit work. But she could only stay away for so long. Because in 2019, Jeffrey Epstein was suddenly everywhere. Billionaire Jeffrey Epstein has been arrested on new sex trafficking charges.

Epstein has long faced accusations of sexually abusing underage grounds. The well-connected Billionaire Jeffrey Epstein is now facing similar charges in federal court. On July 6, 2019, authorities arrested Epstein at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey. He was charged with sex trafficking of minors and conspiracy to commit sex trafficking of minors,

“and he was taken to a federal detention facility.”

The shocking revelations immediately sparked a frenzy of reporting. Journalists began combing through Epstein's vast web of connections, scrutinizing the people and institutions tied to him, among them was MIT, and Epstein's death in prison only intensified the scrutiny. So, breaking news right now, disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein has taken his own life

while he was behind bars here in New York City. Within five days of the news, media lab director Joy Eto released a public apology. He admitted that he had approved donations from Epstein, what he called an error in judgment. It didn't acknowledge the extent of things.

It did make me feel like, oh, the real story is not going to come out. You know, the truth isn't going to come out. Well, some were calling for Eto to resign. Many of his colleagues at the media lab rallied to his defense, even publishing a letter of support.

I saw a number of names on there who I knew, knew everything that I knew, and if I was them and I was still working at the lab, I'd probably feel pressured in order to keep my job. I got to put my name on this list. A week later, MIT's president issued a statement titled,

"Letter Regarding Jeffrey Epstein and MIT." It read in part, "Here are the core facts as best as we can determine." Over the course of 20 years, MIT received approximately $800,000 through foundations controlled by Jeffrey Epstein. And I knew, for a fact, that those were not the extent of the numbers.

And I was at home in my apartment, and I just remembered that I still had my old phone from when I worked at MIT. For some reason, they hadn't cut off my email access. I went to my cupboard, pulled up the phone, booted it up, searched Epstein's name, and instantly had like 30 emails referencing everything.

I just immediately felt the weight of that. And if there was ever a moment that this information would stand

Signi gave herself the weekend to decide whether to come forward with what she knew.

“Ultimately, she determined that she wouldn't forgive herself if she sat on the information.”

So that Monday, she emailed a media lab professor who'd resigned and discussed writing that she felt burdened by information. The professor connected her with whistleblower aid, a nonprofit that supports people exposing misconduct. And before long, Signi was put in touch with Ronan Farrow at the New Yorker.

I knew that if Ronan Farrow is telling a story, people are listening. That's part of why I decided that I didn't want to remain anonymous, that I would put my name on it and say, you got to call me a liar. If you want to deny this. On September 6, 2019, Ronan Farrow published an article in the New Yorker titled,

"How an Elite University Research Center concealed its relationship with Jeffrey Epstein." Nothing could have prepared Signi for the media firestorm that followed. It was an onslaught.

It was every media outlet and once I'd never heard of.

Less than 24 hours after the article broke. Eto resigned. He also stepped down from a visiting professorship at Harvard and resigned from the boards of three organizations, including the New York Times. I was shocked. So rarely you see any sort of justice, and I wasn't seeking justice for myself.

“But to have forced my key to actually acknowledge it”

or do we to be pushed to resign or MIT to have to investigate themselves. I was not expecting any of that. Signi is referring to the investigation that was commissioned by MIT's president and delegated to an outside law firm. Goodwin and Proctor.

I asked Signi what she thought of it.

It was a part of me that read it and went, "Well, this is good that they did this, but it was months later after people had moved on to the next scandal or tragedy. And I don't think many people read it. I will say that you won't find my name in there, and you also won't find Bill Gates's name in there. So how thorough could it really have been?"

One thing the report did make clear was that Eto wasn't the only one at fault. Others in the lab had condoned, or at least ignored Epstein's donations. Among them was a researcher whose office was right next to Kim Holmanz, who we heard from at the start of the episode. Here's Kim.

This researcher was working on consciousness. So I had many conversations with him that were quite philosophical in nature. Kim discovered that her colleagues pathed the media lab went straight through Epstein. Epstein had originally introduced the researcher to Eto, and was subsidizing his work. It's hard to sort of really explain what that was like to have had great conversations with somebody

about things like consciousness and enlightenment. Who has absolutely no problem taking money from somebody who has violated children. The entire episode left Kim questioning the media lab. A place she'd once held in high regard. We'd all been duped by this false notion that we were aligned with morality and ethics and doing good for society.

We couldn't say that anymore. That's a really hard pill to swallow. Today, Jeffrey Epstein's name is back in the headlines. The House Oversight Committee has released a new batch of documents from his estate. But instead of bringing closure,

it's only fueled louder demands for every remaining file to be made public. And for the redacted names to be revealed. Among those calling for transparency are Epstein survivors. But we are not going away, we are not going to be quiet, and we are not going to give up. And I ask the American public to stand with us and knock it up.

Sydney was struck watching those survivors testify on Capitol Hill. Until then, she admitted she had implant on answering my email.

“Where have you been pulled back into the media spotlight?”

But the women's courage, in the face of trauma, on a much greater scale than her own, moved her. It was at that moment where I was like, "Okay, yes, they're going to be brave enough to stand on this. That's the Capitol and saying that they will name their abusers out loud. They have experienced so much worse. So if they're willing to put it out there, I shouldn't be afraid of it either."

Thank you to journalists and author Nome Cohen for his insights and contributions to this episode.

This episode was written and reported by Margo Gray.

“Campus Files is produced by Ian Mont, Elliott Adler, and me, Margo Gray.”

Our executive producers and story editors are Maddie Sprunkaiser and Lloyd Lockridge.

Campus Files is edited mixed and mastered by Chris Basel and Andy Jaskowitz.

“Special thanks to Jenna Weiss-Berman, J.D. Crowley, Leah Reece Dennis, more a current Josephina Francis, Kurt Courtney,”

Hillary Shuff, Sean Cherry, Laura Burman, and Hillary Van Ornam, original theme music by James Waterman and Davy Sumner. If you have tips or story ideas, write to us at Campus [email protected].

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