The Boston Globe - 11.09.2019

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2019 The Boston Globe Opinion A

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MIT Media Lab’s

tarnished coffers

Letters should be written exclusively to the Globe and

include name, address, and daytime telephone number.

They should be 200 words or fewer. All are subject to

editing. Letters to the Editor, The Boston Globe, 1 Exchange

Pl, Ste 201, Boston, MA 02109-2132; [email protected]

MIT president is keeping public

ill-informed amid Epstein scandal

MIT president L. Rafael Reif has made public statements

about Jeffrey Epstein following reports in the Globe and

The New Yorker exposing the Massachusetts Institute of

Technology for accepting money affiliated with Epstein.

Both statements lacked transparency, leaving faculty, stu-

dents, and the public ill-informed.

The first statement, dated Aug. 23, failed to note how

easily Epstein circumvented the blacklist and that Epstein

directed friends to donate on his behalf. This information

was known among multiple people at the Media Lab, as de-

scribed in The New Yorker, which MIT could have uncov-

ered and shared. In Reif’s second statement, dated Sept. 7,

Reif called for an external review but made no mention of

whether the wider community will have direct access to its

findings.

In MIT’s mission statement, the school affirms its com-

mitment to disseminating knowledge on the world’s great-

est challenges. Is not human trafficking one of those chal-

lenges?

MARK GOLDMAN

Cambridge

The writer is a graduate student in chemical engineering

at MIT.

Epstein’s brand of justice

mustn’t be overlooked

Re “MIT official out on new Epstein allegations” (Page A1,

Sept. 8): For Jeffrey Epstein, it seems the appellation

“Voldemort” means not only “he who must not be named,”

as some MIT Media Lab staff members referred to him, but

also he who must not be reported on accurately. Epstein

had not, as stated in your article, “spent a year in jail.” He

served a modified form of house arrest or work release.

Why does this matter? Spending a year in jail has a very

specific meaning to most people. Stating the actual condi-

tions of his 2008 conviction would have highlighted the

sweetheart deal arranged for Epstein by Alexander Acosta

and the variant forms of “justice” available to the wealthy

and well-connected.

ANDY MERMELL

Chelmsford

This is not a country that cares

about women and girls

MIT’s embrace of Jeffrey Epstein is, unfortunately for wom-

en, a reflection of attitudes in our country as a whole.

A country that elects a man who has insulted, degraded,

demeaned, and assaulted women, prioritizing other issues

above that, is not a country that cares about women and

girls.

MIT’s decision to secretly accept money from a known

abuser of teenage girls is yet another demonstration of this

sad fact.

KRISTIN SEMMELMEYER

Cambridge

Adam Weinberg’s Sept. 6 op-ed, “Stakeholder capitalism

can reshape education,” is well taken — undergraduate ed-

ucation needs to grapple with preparing students to be-

come successful citizens, regardless of the career path they

choose. But the Business Roundtable’s statement support-

ing stakeholder capitalism should also point the way to re-

shaping the MBA curriculum. Only a handful of business

schools include courses on employee ownership or other

models of broad-based ownership.

In recent research we conducted at the Democracy Col-

laborative, we found that mission-driven and employee-

owned companies are exceptionally successful at delivering

sustainable and equitable outcomes. These companies in-

clude well-known brands such as Eileen Fisher, King Ar-

thur Flour, and Clif Bar. The next generation of enterprise

can be seen in these companies — firms such as Recology,

the San Francisco-based waste-hauling and recycling firm,

with $1.2 billion in revenue, that is 100 percent employee

owned. Garbage truck drivers there earn $100,000 a year,

because when absentee shareholders aren’t extracting

wealth, there’s more for workers.

Broad-based ownership is the missing piece to make

stakeholder service real for companies. Young business

leaders need to learn about businesses with stakeholder

service in their DNA, supported by ownership cultures in

which workers share in the value created.

MARJORIE KELLY

Executive vice president

The Democracy Collaborative

Washington

Employee-ownedfirmsareavitallab

forstakeholdercapitalism

The recap of the Sept. 7 New Hampshire Democratic Party

convention (“Making their cases,” Metro, Sept. 8) did not

make reference to a top-tier candidate. Pete Buttigieg got a

large and enthusiastic reception both inside and outside

the convention hall. Furthermore, his campaign is opening

offices in every county in the state (12 total), with 56 staff

and counting. The total head count of attendance at Butt-

igieg events in New Hampshire has exceeded 8,000 so far.

He has had endorsements to date from a number of current

and former public officials in the state. Not bad for a presi-

dential candidate from halfway across the country.

PAULA MIRANDA MCKEEVER

Attleboro

Makenote—Buttigieg’spresence

inNewHampshireisnoteworthy

W

hen I was a staff writer

at a university alumni

magazine, my goal was

always the same: find the

most interesting graduates

with the most compelling stories. So as I

pitched a story about the CEO of a company

garnering national attention for its

innovative work, I wasn’t expecting this

response:

“[Expletive] him. He never gives us any

money.”

That came from a woman in alumni

relations who had other ideas about the

magazine’s purpose: ego-boosting, suitable-

for-framing, 2,000-word profiles designed to

coax open the fat wallets of current and

future donors.

I dubbed this “C.R.E.A.M.” syndrome, a

play on the hip-hop classic by the Wu-Tang

Clan, an acronym for “Cash rules everything

around me.”

That should be MIT’s school song.

Muck, all of it self-inflicted, continues to

rise at the esteemed university. After a

scorching Ronan Farrow investigation in

The New Yorker last week about the deep

ties between convicted sex offender Jeffrey

Epstein and the school’s Media Lab, its long-

time director, Joi Ito, resigned. Now the

Globe has revealed that top MIT fund-rais-

ing and finance officers knew about Ep-

stein’s extensive connections to the Media

Lab, and sought to keep those links hidden.

Epstein, who once palled around with

President Trump (before Trump moved into

the White House), former President Clinton,

and British royal Prince Andrew, also acted

as an intermediary for MIT to land big

donations from Microsoft founder Bill Gates

and Leon Black, founder of one of the

world’s largest private equity firms.

MIT facilitated Epstein, convicted in

2008 of solicitation of prostitution and

procurement of minors for prostitution, in

cleaning up his sullied reputation. They

helped refashion a convicted pedophile and

registered sex offender into a

philanthropist.

They knew it was wrong — that’s why

school officials worked so hard to conceal it

— but were unwilling to part with Epstein,

who gladly served as the Media Lab’s ATM.

For his cynical purposes, it was money well

spent.

As Wu-Tang’s Method Man intoned,

“CREAM, get the money/Dollar, dollar bill,

y’all.”

Of course, MIT’s behavior isn’t an outlier.

Donations are the mother’s milk of higher

education. More money means better

facilities, programs, and the hiring of

superstar professors. It means buckets of

cash for researchers, and the prestige that

keeps students clamoring for admission.

But it shouldn’t come at the impossibly

high cost of allowing a sex offender to

rebrand himself as an academic mensch.

For decades, historically black colleges

and universities (HBCUs) had few benefac-

tors as generous as Bill Cosby. His $20 mil-

lion donation to Atlanta’s Spelman College

in 1988 remains the largest ever to an HB-

CU. Now, it’s possible that not everyone at

those schools knew that Cosby was a serial

predator who allegedly drugged and sexual-

ly assaulted more than 50 women. (Cosby

was found guilty of three counts of aggravat-

ed indecent assault in 2018 in Pennsylva-

nia.) Yet the rumors were at least well

known enough that it became a dark punch

line on the NBC comedy “30 Rock.”

Only as Cosby’s public persona descend-

ed from “America’s Dad” to accused, then

convicted, rapist did anyone consider how

those donations burnished his image and

compelled people who should have known

better to look the other way.

The university I worked for wasn’t get-

ting eight-figure checks. But there were still

many machinations to keep those donations

rolling in. There was the deep-pocketed

graduate allowed to edit his own profile.

There was the guy the university was trying

to woo as a trustee using, in part, a glowing

feature as bait. As I talked to friends at other

colleges big and small, I learned this was

how that world worked. Most people simply

accepted it, like spiraling tuition and under-

paid adjuncts, as an unfortunate fact,

With the lengthening shadow of MIT’s

troubles, more heads likely will roll. And

they should. Yet it won’t make a dent in a

larger, insidious culture that corrupts higher

education and allows its officials to willfully

ignore all that dirt beneath all that cash.

Renée Graham can be reached at

[email protected]. Follow her on

Twitter @reneeygraham.

RENÉEGRAHAM

At colleges, cash rules everything

rebels of Flight 93 found a mea-
sure of success by forcing the
followers of Al Qaeda to crash
the plane on the grounds where
we gather today. In their deter-
mination to save themselves,
they saved countless others in
the US Capitol or the White
House, and they gave us the
first glimmer of hope at a terri-
ble moment.
Let me also note that the
people of Somerset County, Pa.,
in their own way, did much the
same. When they raced to the
land they knew as the old Dia-

mond T coal mine, they didn’t

ask who was on board the

plane or where they were from

or how they prayed. They only

asked: How can we help?

Recently I was e-mailing

with Donna Glessner, founder

of the Flight 93 Ambassador

Program. She was struck by

how, in my book, I named all

40 passengers and crew mem-

bers in a section that details

their heroism. We talked about

why I decided to list them all,

especially since in the narrative

I didn’t name everyone aboard

the other three hijacked planes.

The fact is, when writing

about Flight 93, I felt as though

I didn’t have any other choice.

In my line of work, it’s my goal

to know exactly what hap-

pened. That way, I can convey it

to readers with absolute cer-

tainty. But for the story of

Flight 9 3,somedetailswillfor-

ever remain unknowable, lost

to history when the plane

struck the ground. I’ve made

my peace with that. More than

that, I’ve embraced it.

The result is that we are

compelled to celebrate every

man and woman aboard that

plane equally and collectively.

Their story, like the American

story, is about more than indi-

vidual achievement or individu-

al interests. It’s about the power

of what can be accomplished

when people trust one another

and find strength in one anoth-

er. In doing so, the men and

women of Flight 93 changed

from strangers to partners,

from fingers to a fist.

As Abraham Lincoln said on

another battlefield, one not far

from Shanksville: “It is for us

the living, rather, to be dedicat-

ed here to the unfinished work

which they who fought here

have thus far so nobly advanced.”

It’s my belief that the legacy of

the passengers and crew of Flight

93 — the work they “so nobly ad-

vanced” — was the cause of the

common good.

In America, a stranger with dif-

ferent beliefs or background might

become your greatest ally, your

blood brother or sister, engaged

alongside you in the fight for sur-

vival. Or perhaps the eternal strug-

gle for life, liberty, and the pursuit

of happiness.

Be open to that possibility. By

doing so, we can honor the sacri-

fice by the 40 heroes of United

Flight 93 as the utmost embodi-

ment of true American values.

Mitchell Zuckoff is the author of

“Fall and Rise: The Story of 9/11”

and is a professor of journalism at

Boston University. As a reporter

for the Globe, he wrote the lead

story for the newspaper on 9/11.

Facingan

existentialthreat,

theydecidedto

voteona

response.

AFP/GETTY

on Sept. 12, 2001, in Shanksville, Pa. The crash of the hijacked plane killed all people on board.

GLOBE STAFF/ ADOBE ; GLOBE FILE PHOTO

Ofcourse,MIT’sbehavior

isn’tanoutlier.Donations

arethemother’smilkof

highereducation.