[Scheherazade]

The key difference is that MIT had someone with decision making authority admit it to it on the record, i.e. Joi Ito, whereas Harvard did not. This is precisely what gave the whole Epstein debacle some fresh oxygen. In fact it may have been what tipped mostly vague conspiracy theories into a critical mass of undeniable reality.

Although there definitely were numerous folks at Harvard also doing dubious things they simply closed ranks and didn’t say anything substantial. They almost certainly are less straightforward than the MediaLab crowd, after all they have far more to lose since it was done directly under the school administration and not a semi-autonomous entity.

Doesn’t that seem like a very strong incentive for certain folks to do something to MIT? At the very least to discourage anyone at Harvard from getting funny ideas in their old age, and to encourage in the future immediate responses like Harvard and discourage another Ito when something like this happens again.

Because there probably are even more damaging things under wraps than the worst fantasies Epstein had, as another commenter alluded to with strange accounting anomalies of Defense research money in the several hundred million range, i.e that a significant percentage of the money going to MIT from the DoD was shady. If you extrapolate that to a nationwide scale, that’s a lot of billions going who knows where.

[woofie11]

... I think you missed how this played out at Harvard. The Harvard administration -- exaggerating only a little bit -- said "Yes, we took a bunch of money from Epstein, yes we gave him an office, and by golly, we're not giving any of it back and if we had a mulligan, we'd do it all over again just the same way."

Of course, they used more erudite, PC language to say that, but that's in effect what Harvard did. Perhaps you might not like it, but it had the virtue of being honest.

They did pull back a little bit from that stance, upon taking flack for it, but at the end of the day, not a lot.

MIT, in contrast, bullied, covered-up, and intimidated.

It's a different type of corruption, but I prefer the open and honest Harvard type of corruption.

[Scheherazade]

That’s what they admitted to. Harvard could have done worse and kept it under wraps, we won’t definitely know until someone does an Ito there too. In fact there are credible reasons to believe something even more dubious was going on there.

Think about the process of what giving anyone a nice office in one of the prime buildings at Harvard in that manner requires in that timeframe, what else it implies, and here’s the critical thing, without anyone else in that building or on that floor raising any concerns publicly.

It at the very least means all those concerns were intercepted privately before anyone could have aired the dirty laundry.

And do you know of anyone who could have gotten all that just by asking nicely, some smooth talking, a flight to an island, and a big cheque?

A named building maybe, nice press releases sure, an actual position complete with office, slot in the org. chart, and name plaque, in the academic bureaucracy of the most status conscious school in the world?

The one that ousted their own esteemed president, the former treasury secretary who got an AM and PhD at said school, for an off the cuff remark in a speech not long before?

Can just some millions be enough to motivate the decision makers at Harvard to do that?

Put another way, there are only a few, far more credible, folks who had setups even a fraction as cushy as Epstein had, at least on the record.

You sound like someone who understands how academia truly works. From your experience doesn’t that chain of events imply something more was involved?

Though of course the fact that BillG was acting as a secret intermediary for Epstein’s funds at MIT also really implies something more was involved there too and it implies that Ito still has some secrets and/or was used as a patsy. So in the end you may be correct.

Whatever force(s) powerful enough to motivate BillG to act like that may indeed make Harvard’s type more preferable, assuming the folks there were strong enough to resist what BillG could not.

The funky DoD accounting though... has profound implications nationwide.

[woofie11]

It's possible, but I'm skeptical.

Giving someone a nice office doesn't take all that much. Unpaid "visiting scientist" or "research affiliate" positions aren't actually very hard to come by. It doesn't take more than one decision maker. I've had similar positions at several schools, mostly as a convenience, and all it takes is one prof to send an email or fill out a one-pager form (depending on the school). Office space is largely a matter of availability. If it's scarce in a lab, you're not getting it. If it's plentiful, well, I've had random offices at universities too.

I know plenty of people with such positions at MIT with minimal academic backgrounds. The general arrangement was that a professor wanted something done. Someone was willing to do it for free, usually because it was interesting and fun. Professor signed a form. In one case, this was a random person more-or-less off-the-street (at MIT).

Harvard is also broken up into silos; it's more like a loose confederation of schools than a unified university. That makes things like this even easier, since only one place needs to agree.

Most of Harvard seems to take their motto of veritas pretty seriously, still. That doesn't mean they don't keep secrets -- they do -- but I haven't seen them openly lie much. Their corruption is different; it's more about building out a political power base.

As far as I know -- although this is really quite third hand -- Larry Summers was an explicit, planned takedown. Harvard politics are... complex.