A prominent academic at a top college with longstanding ties to Jeffrey Epstein has resigned from one of his roles over the Justice Department’s latest release of files on the disgraced financier.
Richard Axel, a Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist who has shaped young minds for more than half a century at Columbia University, said in a statement Wednesday that he was stepping down as co-director of the university’s Zuckerman Institute “to focus on research and teaching in my lab.”
He said his relationship with Epstein had been a “serious error in judgment,” adding that “the harm that he has caused to so many people, makes my association with him all the more painful and inexcusable.”
The New York Times reports that Axel maintained a close relationship with Epstein, beginning in the 1980s. He told New York magazine in 2007 the predator “has the ability to make connections that other minds can’t make,” describing him as “extremely smart and probing.”
A transcript contained in the 3 million documents released by the DOJ on Jan. 30 reveals Axel joking with the financier in 2011 about his attempt to secure a pardon from Florida’s then-governor, Charlie Crist. The state had convicted Epstein of soliciting prostitution from a minor three years prior.
“It would get rid of my sex offender status,” Epstein said. “Even though some of the women keep saying, ‘It’s so exciting. I’ve never actually been with a sex offender before’.” Axel then responded to the predator’s comments about a line of “sex offender lingerie” with a grim anecdote about a 20-year-old prostitute sleeping with a 66-year-old man.
The Times further reports that Axel “repeatedly served as an informal adviser” to help Epstein get his associates’ children into Columbia, one of the nation’s top universities. Emails from the latest DOJ tranche apparently show that Axel set aside time to meet with Alice de Rothschild, the daughter of billionaire European banker Baron Edmond James de Rothschild.
“I have spoken with columbia admissions and she is good but not strongest candidate,” he told Epstein in November 2016. He continued “pushing” but she was ultimately rejected, and enrolled at N.Y.U. instead. The Rothschild family have previously said her university applications relied entirely on her “grades” and that she “cannot be held responsible for Jeffrey Epstein’s unilateral actions.”
The Times also notes that flight tickets suggest Axel and his wife had planned to visit Epstein on his private Caribbean island toward the end of 2011. It remains unclear if they made the trip.
Columbia said in a statement it has “no evidence that Dr. Axel violated any university policy or law,” but conceded his resignation from the Zuckerman Institute was appropriate.
The top neuroscientist is not the only figure at Columbia with ties to Epstein. DOJ files have revealed his relationship with at least four members of the college’s dental school, one of whom, Letty Moss-Salentijn, also remains employed as a professor.
The documents have shed further light on work done by Jay Lefkowitz, a prominent attorney at white shoe law firm Kirkland Ellis and adjunct professor at Columbia Law School, as part of Epstein’s historic efforts to intimidate reporters covering his crimes.
The Daily Beast has contacted Axel and Columbia University for further comment.
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