Update: If you are curious to know exactly what Botstein said in that email, it can be found here, in The Daily Catch.
Tuesday, February 10, 2026
Botstein Responds
Today, in Rural Intelligence, Jamie Larson reports about Leon Botstein and the accounts of his connection with Jeffrey Epstein: "Bard President Botstein Responds to Epstein Ties in Campus Email, But Big Questions Remain."
The issue is of interest to us in Hudson not only because Bard College is a few miles down the road but also because the institution is soon to own about eighty properties in the City of Hudson.
My favorite little tidbit from Botstein's statement today was that apparently Botstein tried to leverage Epstein's fetish for the novel Lolita to flatter Epstein's intellect and extract his money. As if Epstein, an illiterate who could not even spell Botstein's name correctly, was interested in a literary exegesis on Vladimir Nabokov.
ReplyDeleteSomeone was so kind to turn all these documents released by the DoJ into a clone of gmail (jmail.world) that lets you browse a virtual inbox as if you were logged in as Epstein. A particular gem it contains is https://jmail.world/jamazon which is a record of all Amazon orders Epstein placed.
DeleteIt contains, among many strange things, a copy of Lolita which was delivered to him on May 24, 2019. When I saw that days ago, I at first thought that that may have been an easter egg placed in there by the makers of that site. But it seems it was a real order.
Apparently, Epstein was also big into Ludwig Wittgenstein in 2016 when, amongst other topical books, he ordered
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Nothing puzzles me more than that particular item.
I wouldn't think that the tarnished president of Bard will have much bearing on what they'll do with the portfolio of properties in Hudson.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I am very curious how this will play out. Botstein is clearly trying the sit-out strategy but there's some strong rumblings amongst Bard students already, including an open letter asking him to resign.
Ultimately, it's gonna be the trustees that will decide his fate. Since there's so far no indication that many of them were courted by Epstein, they may opt to can the scumbag.
Botstein's statement today is a window into his philosophy of fundraising, which can be summarized as the ends justify the means. Epstein's money was green, and so was Galvan's.
ReplyDeleteBingo. And they’ll ultimately do what they want to serve their “fiduciary” duty.
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