In 1975, Bard College, a quirky liberal arts school awash in debt and with an endowment of about $100,000, faced extinction.
Trustees, seeking an energetic new leader, turned to an odd choice to helm a struggling college: Leon Botstein, a 28-year-old musician and academic. They told him to “build something great or close it.”
Over half a century, Dr. Botstein built a kingdom, growing the endowment to $1 billion, expanding into K-12 schools around the country, opening campuses abroad and starting up degrees for prisoners. His persona — charismatic, intellectual, off beat — became inseparable from the institution itself.
But at some point, Dr. Botstein’s efforts to expand his school brought him into contact with another ambitious man, the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Like many of the celebrities, politicians, finance power brokers and academics who appear in documents recently released by the Department of Justice, Dr. Botstein was in touch with Mr. Epstein in the years after he was convicted of soliciting prostitution with a minor, sending warm emails and exchanging visits. Dr. Botstein’s messages described Mr. Epstein as a cherished friend and newly uncovered emails show how he helped young female musicians in the financier’s orbit.
While newly revealed Epstein connections have led many powerful people to resign from top positions or step out of public life, Dr. Botstein has remained in his post so far.
At Bard’s campus, spread across a picturesque 1,200 acres overlooking the Hudson River in New York, Dr. Botstein’s friendly solicitations of Mr. Epstein have raised eyebrows and upset some students and alumni. But so far there have been only sporadic calls for Dr. Botstein, who recently celebrated his 50th anniversary as leader of the school, to step down.
Dr. Botstein has maintained over the years that his meetings with Mr. Epstein were entirely for fund-raising. Mr. Epstein gave a small unsolicited gift to the college in 2011 and dangled the possibility of a major gift that would never come, Dr. Botstein said.
Faculty members, divided over how to respond to the new revelations, ultimately decided to do nothing. The student government has not weighed in. Its speaker agreed to an interview for this article before changing her mind without explanation.
A former student organized a protest on Tuesday. About 10 people showed up.
And, critically, board members appear to be sticking by Dr. Botstein. None have responded to requests for comment; some have previously said that the president is the linchpin of the college’s success.
“For a long time, it was clear to everyone that without Leon there could be no more Bard,” Marcelle Clements, a Bard trustee, told The New Yorker in a 2014 article.
The youngest college president ever
Dr. Botstein’s job as the president of Bard was not his first time holding the title. At age 23, he became the youngest college president in American history when he was named president of Franconia College, an experimental school in New Hampshire where his future father-in-law served as board chair.
The son of Polish immigrants, Dr. Botstein grew up in the Bronx and earned a bachelor’s in history from the University of Chicago. Franconia, now defunct, became accredited under Dr. Botstein’s watch. Five years later, Bard’s trustees were searching for a willing candidate to run the school after two other finalists had dropped out. They picked Dr. Botstein, who would later earn a doctorate in music history from Harvard in 1985.
Bard College always marched to its own beat, even more so under its new leader. At Bard, applicants can skip the traditional process and instead submit three lengthy essays, and each new student gets a copy of Plato’s “Republic.” The school grew from 600 students in the 1970s to about 2,200 now, with thousands more in affiliated schools.
But the alumni gravitated to music and the arts, not highly paid Wall Street jobs, meaning the college often had to look elsewhere to raise money. Dr. Botstein was good at finding it. Some $2.3 billion has been raised in Dr. Botstein’s tenure, according to his spokesman, David Wade.
Some on campus have chalked up their president’s relationship with Mr. Epstein as part of the routine of courting wealthy potential donors.
“Fund-raising is always relationship building, especially when you’re talking about big gifts,” said Kenneth Stern, the head of a center at Bard and a faculty member. “I don’t think you can go to somebody and say ‘give me the money.’”
But Dr. Botstein’s critics worry that affection for the longtime leader and fear of a Bard without him have made his supporters blind to behavior that could ultimately hurt the school and its reputation.
“Jeffrey Epstein was a convicted sex offender at the time Bard accepted his gifts and maintained contact with him,” Ambra Hunter, the mother of a student enrolled in one of Bard’s early-college programs, wrote in an email to Dr. Botstein over the weekend that she also sent to media.
“Your position as president of a prestigious college helped launder his reputation through association, signaling to students, faculty, donors and the broader public that he remained an acceptable participant in academic life,” she wrote in the email.
A cherished friendship or necessary evil?
Dr. Botstein has said he has been “shocked and appalled at the horrific nature and extent of his monstrous and criminal depravity” of Mr. Epstein. He has apologized for involving himself and his college, and called Mr. Epstein a “truly evil man.”
Messages that have been publicized already and some newly revealed communications show that they stayed in touch for years — discussing music and their shared interest in watches. Dr. Botstein wrote that he cherished his “new friendship” with Mr. Epstein and signed off one 2013 message with “Miss you.”
In several emails, they discussed a young woman Mr. Epstein wanted Dr. Botstein to help.
In 2013, Mr. Epstein discussed the woman, a violinist from Europe, with one of his associates, agreeing to pay for her studies in the United States. When her family balked because of his criminal history, he suggested they get a reference from the American Symphony Orchestra, where Dr. Botstein was the principal conductor.
Later, Mr. Epstein referred to her as “my tall blonde violinist” in one email to Dr. Botstein. In another, he told the young woman Dr. Botstein would be her “dinner partner” at a gathering. Mr. Wade has said that Dr. Botstein was unable to attend that dinner because it conflicted with his family’s Rosh Hashana celebration, but that he had agreed to drop by beforehand to say hello.
Separately, in a 2014 email, Dr. Botstein wrote to Mr. Epstein about meeting “your protege pianist.”
In 2012, Dr. Botstein’s office had planned a fund-raising trip, with one leg including a visit to Mr. Epstein’s island. The day after the trip, Dr. Botstein thanked Mr. Epstein, writing, “That place is great.” But Mr. Wade cast doubt on whether Dr. Botstein actually visited the island, saying he was referring to “the overall environment of St. Thomas.”
In the years ahead, Dr. Botstein would visit Mr. Epstein’s townhouse numerous times, while Mr. Epstein would fly his helicopter along the Hudson River and land on Bard’s campus, with young women in tow at least once.
The men were in touch the year before Mr. Epstein died by suicide in a federal jail in 2019, discussing payments for a rare and expensive watch. The emails released by the Justice Department suggest that Dr. Botstein was in possession of the watch for about a year before he began to make payments to Mr. Epstein, who appears to have forgiven the $51,000 debt after Dr. Botstein made about $20,000 in payments.
Last week, Dr. Botstein wrote to the Bard community to apologize and explain his relationship with Mr. Epstein. He wrote that his communication with Mr. Epstein became “more sporadic” after it became clear that he would not make a major donation to the college.
“I was not following the revelatory closing chapter of Mr. Epstein’s life and the extent of his crimes until he was arrested in 2019,” Dr. Botstein wrote, explaining that he uses a warm tone with prospective donors.
Some say the relationship with Mr. Epstein casts a shadow on Dr. Botstein’s storied career.
“Do you usually continue pursuing, with that level of regularity, donors who don’t seem to be donating?” Tallulah Woitach, the former student who organized the protest, asked in an interview, adding, “His emails don’t start with, ‘Dear Mr. Epstein’ and sign off, ‘Best.’ They read like text messages.’”
But the Justice Department messages serve as something of a Rorschach test, with others taking away a different message.
“When I read the publicized emails between Leon and Epstein,” said Francine Prose, a writer in residence at Bard, “my main thought is, ‘my god, how hard Leon has had to work to keep the lights on all these years.’”
Vimal Patel writes about higher education for The Times with a focus on speech and campus culture.
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