{"id":13464,"date":"2019-09-13T20:50:04","date_gmt":"2019-09-14T00:50:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=13464"},"modified":"2019-09-13T20:50:42","modified_gmt":"2019-09-14T00:50:42","slug":"mit-epstein","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2019\/09\/13\/mit-epstein\/","title":{"rendered":"Protesters Demand MIT President Resign Over Role In Epstein Scandal"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cReif, you can\u2019t hide! We demand that you resign!\u201d hundreds of protesters chanted at an \u201cMIT Rally Against Jeffrey Epstein\u201d and \u201cThey Knew: Speak-out against MIT-Epstein Scandal\u201d outside Massachusetts Institute of Technology\u2019s Stratton Student Center this afternoon.<\/p>\n

The protesters were upset that the Cambridge school had accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations from Jeffrey Epstein, a financier who pleaded guilty in Florida in 2008 to soliciting an underage prostitute and then died while in jail this August while awaiting trial on federal charges of sex trafficking of minors.<\/p>\n

In recent days, MIT President L. Rafael Reif admitted that the school hid donations from Epstein and that he wrote Epstein a thank you letter for his contributions.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe administration, they\u2019ve told us lie after lie after lie,\u201d said Husayn Karimi of MIT Students Against War, which organized the protest with No Dark Money at MIT.<\/p>\n

\"\u201cMIT<\/a>
\u201cMIT Rally Against Jeffrey Epstein\u201d and \u201cThey Knew: Speak-out against MIT-Epstein Scandal\u201d outside Massachusetts Institute of Technology\u2019s Stratton Student Center, Sept. 13, 2019. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not jut President Reif. It\u2019s everyone else whose incentive is to keep things exactly as they are,\u201d said Arwa Mboya, an MIT Media Lab student who drew attention in recent weeks for publicly calling on MIT Media Lab Director Joi Ito to resign. Ito quit last week after The New Yorker reported that he had hidden the extent of Epstein\u2019s involvement with the institute. \u201cThe system doesn\u2019t work. It\u2019s broken. That\u2019s why we\u2019re here.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMen stuck. They really suck. \u2026 Not all men,\u201d Mboya told the crowd. Later she said, \u201cMen, I just want to say this: Stop offering your opinion on the matter. Ask women how they\u2019re doing. Ask women if they feel safe here.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\u201cMIT<\/a>
\u201cMIT Rally Against Jeffrey Epstein\u201d and \u201cThey Knew: Speak-out against MIT-Epstein Scandal\u201d outside Massachusetts Institute of Technology\u2019s Stratton Student Center, Sept. 13, 2019. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThis situation with Epstein is disgusting. It\u2019s absolutely despicable that MIT would take money from a convicted pedophile and sex trafficker,\u201d Cambridge City Councilor and MIT alum Quinton Zondervan told the crowd. \u201cThe only solution is for Reif to resign. \u2026 Get rid of everybody who knew about this and facilitated these donations from Epstein. We have to clean house all the way to the top.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe whole scandal is just a symptom of a system that values money and that does not value humanity,\u201d Pankaj Mehta of Science for the People said. He criticized those that he said take science and \u201cturn it into a tool of oppression.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"<\/a>
MIT Media Lab student Arwa Mboya speaks at the \u201cMIT Rally Against Jeffrey Epstein\u201d and \u201cThey Knew: Speak-out against MIT-Epstein Scandal\u201d outside Massachusetts Institute of Technology\u2019s Stratton Student Center, Sept. 13, 2019. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Organizers wrote on the Facebook event page for the protest<\/a>: \u201cTop MIT officials covered up Epstein\u2019s donations to the Institute. MIT Professors and officials visited him in prison, flew on his \u2018Lolita Express,\u2019 invited him to campus, and gave him awards. MIT CANNOT be trusted to investigate itself through an \u201cindependent\u201d law firm that they themselves hire and that reports to the MIT Corporation. WE, students, staff, faculty, and Boston-area community members MUST hold MIT accountable for this and more!! Accepting money linked to Jeffrey Epstein wasn\u2019t just disgusting and immoral. It violated MIT\u2019s own donor policies. Any senior administrators who knew about these donations MUST RESIGN IMMEDIATELY. But individual resignations aren\u2019t enough. The Epstein scandal demonstrates a rot at the heart of the Media Lab and MIT as a whole. It gets at more profound issues regarding how MIT finances its activities and who it partners with to perform research. We demand an end to dark money. We demand an end to the pernicious influence that millionaire pedophiles, genocidal crown princes, billionaire climate change deniers, and giant corporations profiting from wars, deportations, and concentration camps at the border hold over MIT and academia generally.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

If this is the kind of coverage of arts, cultures and activisms you appreciate, please support Wonderland by contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And sign up for our free, weekly newsletter<\/a> so that you don’t miss any of our reporting.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n
\"\u201cMIT<\/a>
\u201cMIT Rally Against Jeffrey Epstein\u201d and \u201cThey Knew: Speak-out against MIT-Epstein Scandal\u201d outside Massachusetts Institute of Technology\u2019s Stratton Student Center, Sept. 13, 2019. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"<\/a>
MIT Media Lab student Arwa Mboya speaks at the \u201cMIT Rally Against Jeffrey Epstein\u201d and \u201cThey Knew: Speak-out against MIT-Epstein Scandal\u201d outside Massachusetts Institute of Technology\u2019s Stratton Student Center, Sept. 13, 2019. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Husayn<\/a>
Husayn Karimi of MIT Students Against War speaks at the \u201cMIT Rally Against Jeffrey Epstein\u201d and \u201cThey Knew: Speak-out against MIT-Epstein Scandal\u201d outside Massachusetts Institute of Technology\u2019s Stratton Student Center, Sept. 13, 2019. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\u201cMIT<\/a>
\u201cMIT Rally Against Jeffrey Epstein\u201d and \u201cThey Knew: Speak-out against MIT-Epstein Scandal\u201d outside Massachusetts Institute of Technology\u2019s Stratton Student Center, Sept. 13, 2019. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\u201cMIT<\/a>
\u201cMIT Rally Against Jeffrey Epstein\u201d and \u201cThey Knew: Speak-out against MIT-Epstein Scandal\u201d outside Massachusetts Institute of Technology\u2019s Stratton Student Center, Sept. 13, 2019. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cReif, you can\u2019t hide! We demand that you resign!\u201d hundreds of protesters chanted at an \u201cMIT Rally Against Jeffrey Epstein\u201d and \u201cThey Knew: Speak-out against MIT-Epstein Scandal\u201d outside Massachusetts Institute of Technology\u2019s Stratton Student Center this afternoon. The protesters were upset that the Cambridge school had accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13479,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[106,108],"tags":[42,326,607],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13464"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13464"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13464\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13484,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13464\/revisions\/13484"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}