\n<\/p>\n
To Bard College senior Owen Denker, Leon Botstein is an imperial president.<\/p>\n
\u201cBotstein is a figure on this campus that has ultimate power. He is often likened to a king by faculty that can wave his wand and do whatever,\u201d said Denker, a literature major at the liberal arts college in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y. Botstein has led Bard since 1975, bringing it from the brink of bankruptcy to rest on a $1\u00a0billion endowment. Now, Denker and other members of the two-month-old student group Take Back Bard are calling for Botstein\u2019s resignation and for change to what the group calls a \u201cculture of sexual misconduct\u201d on campus. <\/p>\n
In February, Bard was rocked by new evidence that Botstein\u2019s relationship with the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein ran deeper than previously thought. He has not been implicated in any of Epstein\u2019s crimes, but Botstein\u2019s name is mentioned thousands of times in the Epstein files released by the U.S. Justice Department. He visited Epstein\u2019s infamous island and invited Epstein to dinner, to the opera and to campus. <\/p>\n
In January of 2015, seven years after his first conviction, Epstein was back in the news after unsealed court documents showed new allegations that he and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor paid for sex with minors. Botstein reached out to Epstein with a message of support: \u201cTrue friendship, in my view, is among the most honorable and rare of virtues. And I value our friendship, so if there is any way I can be of help, let me know (not that royalty is quite up my proverbial alley).\u201d<\/p>\n
Epstein was not his friend, \u201che was a prospective donor,\u201d Botstein told students, faculty and staff in a February letter. The president first connected with Epstein after he gave an unsolicited $75,000 gift to Bard High School Early College in 2011, three years after his conviction for soliciting prostitution from a minor.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was not following the revelatory closing chapter of Mr. Epstein\u2019s life and the extent of his crimes until he was arrested in 2019,\u201d Botstein wrote. \u201cI remain shocked and appalled at the horrific nature and extent of his monstrous and criminal depravity. I am deeply sorry to have involved myself and the College with him in any way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Over the last few months, Bard faculty members have remained largely silent or supportive of the president. In a recent letter, the Faculty Senate stopped short of criticizing Botstein for his relationship with Epstein or calling for his resignation. One faculty member who spoke to Inside Higher Ed<\/em> on the condition of anonymity said that \u201cmost people at Bard would feel that there\u2019s a lot of positives in Leon\u2019s history at the college.\u201d Botstein is responsible for the Bard Prison Initiative, for creating a liberal arts program at Al Quds University in the West Bank and for raising hundreds of millions of dollars for the college, to name a few successes.<\/p>\n \u201cFor people who look at the entirety of President Botstein\u2019s contributions, there\u2019s an awful lot in the very positive side of the ledger that is weighed against a misjudgment from a dozen years ago,\u201d the faculty member said. <\/p>\n Students have been more vocal with their disapproval of the president. The Take Back Bard group grew out of a student government committee formed to discuss and respond to Botstein\u2019s appearance in the latest trove of Epstein files. The group has since distanced itself from student government and counts about 20 members, with dozens more students attending rallies and protests, said Denker, who is one of its founding members. <\/p>\n In a February letter to the Board and the broader community, Take Back Bard expressed frustration that the college had hired the Washington, D.C.\u2013based law firm WilmerHale to investigate Botstein\u2019s ties with Epstein \u201crather than listen to the voice of survivors.\u201d Botstein has routinely declined to speak to the media since the investigation began. A Bard spokesperson told Inside Higher Ed<\/em> that the president \u201cfully supports the Board\u2019s decision to pursue an independent review of this matter and will refrain from commenting further while this process is underway.\u201d <\/p>\n But regardless of the investigation\u2019s outcome, students say, Bard will be left with a pervasive issue: a culture of un- or underaddressed sexual harassment on campus. <\/p>\n \u201cThis lack of transparency coupled with the refusal to recognize the broader epidemic of Bard\u2019s culture of sexual misconduct, ranging from administrative indifference to inappropriate treatment of students by certain professors and administrators, as well the continued reign of a man who put students in the path of a convicted sex offender, sends a clear message of where the Board\u2019s priorities lie,\u201d the students wrote in their letter. <\/p>\n Knowing which professors not to be alone in a room with\u2014that\u2019s normal here.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2014Owen Denker, Bard College senior<\/p>\n The Bard spokesperson said that \u201cprotecting the safety and dignity of our students and community members is central\u201d to the institution. <\/p>\n \u201cOur resources go beyond federal Title IX requirements\u2014including the implementation of an anonymous hotline administered by an outside law firm\u2014and are designed to encourage reporting through multiple, confidential pathways so every community member feels supported in coming forward,\u201d the spokesperson said. \u201cWe are committed to providing meaningful protections and preventing harm before it occurs, by requiring annual Title IX training for faculty, staff, and students, and maintaining policies that address both on and off campus conduct. Bard takes every report seriously and looks into all claims of sexual or gender-based misconduct.\u201d<\/p>\n The spokesperson also said that Take Back Bard hadn’t spoken to administrators about their concerns before talking to media, and that \u201cas soon as we we were made aware of them, we reached out to set up a meeting to discuss.\u201d <\/p>\n Students believe previous efforts to combat campus sexual harassment have fallen short, Denker said. Until 2016, Botstein was the final decision-maker on all Title IX investigations. Not until 2023 did the college have a formal written policy prohibiting sexual, dating or romantic relationships between students and professors. By comparison, Yale University first adopted a similar policy in 1997 to prohibit relationships between professors and the students they do or may teach, and expanded it to include all students in 2010. William & Mary implemented a ban in 2001.<\/p>\n \u201cThe things that go on on this campus are normalized to the extent that students don\u2019t think twice about it,\u201d Denker said. \u201cKnowing which professors not to be alone in a room with\u2014that\u2019s normal here.\u201d<\/p>\n While their public opinions of Botstein remain rather rosy, actual faculty and staff sentiments are split, he said. <\/p>\n \u201cI can say that among administrators, the opinions range quite widely,\u201d Denker said. \u201cThere are a number that we suspect\u2014and some that we know\u2014favor Botstein\u2019s resignation and broader structural change at the college; however, they are afraid of doing so publicly.\u201d <\/p>\n The same is true for faculty, he said. <\/p>\n Botstein\u2019s immense fundraising success and decades-long tenure appear to give him armor against criticism that would likely sink other college leaders. Former Harvard University president Larry Summers, for example, has retreated from nearly all public life since his relationship with Epstein was revealed. A handful of other prominent professors\u2014including Chapman University paleontologist Jack Horner, Columbia University pathology and biochemistry professor Richard Axel, and School of Visual Arts department chair David Ross\u2014have left teaching or leadership roles over their Epstein ties, even though none have been implicated in any of Epstein\u2019s crimes. <\/p>\n Inside Higher Ed<\/em> asked dozens of Bard faculty members to speak on or off the record about Botstein and the campus culture, and only a few replied, primarily to speak in support of Botstein or to decline to speak at all. An anonymous faculty member told The Daily Catch<\/em> in February that \u201cit is virtually impossible for people who are not tenured to say anything because the hiring and firing decisions ultimately are up to Leon.\u201d A second anonymous faculty member also shared that concern. \u201cFor a lot of people, their own security depends on Leon,\u201d she told The Daily Catch<\/em>. <\/p>\n Botstein has a habit of overturning tenure decisions, one now-retired professor told the Daily Freeman<\/em> in 2002. \u201cIn many schools, the president has the final say [on tenure], but I don\u2019t know of any school where the president overturns as many decisions,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n To alum Tallulah Woitach, fear for job security is no excuse for remaining silent. Woitach has been calling for Botstein\u2019s resignation for years. The professors\u2019 silence is a classic hypocrisy in elite liberal arts education, they said. \u201cSo many Bard professors are writing op-eds about how we can resist in the age of Trump. Meanwhile, we have our mini version of that, and no one is willing to do anything about it,\u201d Woitach said. \u201cThe excuses are endless.\u201d<\/p>\n As part of their demands, Take Back Bard is calling for Botstein\u2019s immediate resignation. Though the group has broader goals, Botstein is inextricably tied to the identity of the college and ousting him is a first step, Denker said. In building their case against Botstein\u2014and against the campus culture that they say facilitates sexual harassment\u2014no stone has been left unturned.<\/p>\n Students, alumni and media are examining decades-old interviews and writings of Botstein\u2019s with new scrutiny in light of his relationship with Epstein. In a 1990 interview with Lingua Franca<\/em>, excerpted in Harper\u2019s Magazine<\/em>, Botstein criticized \u201cThe Defense Guard,\u201d a group of 25 high school\u2013age students, mostly women, that campaigned against sexual harassment at Simon\u2019s Rock at Bard College, which served then as an early college for 10th and 11th graders. Sixteen of those students publicly confronted four faculty members and repeated, \u201cIt has come to our attention that you have been sexually harassing students on this campus. Sexual harassment is a crime and will not be tolerated. It will stop,\u201d The New York Times<\/em> reported. The college suspended all 16 students, but those suspensions were later overturned.<\/p>\n The group\u2019s tactics were \u201ca theatrical gesture of radical politics\u201d and \u201cextremely reminiscent of fascism,\u201d Botstein told the now-shuttered Lingua Franca<\/em>. He said the students had not made any formal complaints of harassment to administrators.<\/p>\n Later in the interview, the president said that teachers and students often feel attraction toward each other and suggested that all good student-teacher relationships contain some kind of \u201clibidinal component.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cEither we own up to this sexual dimension and try to manage it or we have to change our ideal, teach with distance, impersonally, by television or in huge lecture halls,\u201d Botstein said.<\/p>\n He also said that the teacher-student power dynamic \u201cworks both ways.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cYes, in general the faculty member has more power. The point of having rules guarding against sexual harassment is to avoid the corruption of the power inherent in academic evaluation,\u201d he said. \u201cYet in the current climate a student can wield considerable power in the very act of making a public accusation. A charge can be devastating to the person\u2019s life and work.\u201d <\/p>\n Either we own up to this sexual dimension and try to manage it or we have to change our ideal.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2014Bard president Leon Botstein, circa 1990<\/p>\n Eight years later, Botstein spoke with radio host Diane Rehm about his book titled Jefferson\u2019s Children<\/em> and his belief that the modern high school was \u201cobsolete\u201d as young people reach physical maturity earlier. He laid out this same argument in an earlier op-ed in the New York Times<\/em>, titled \u201cLet Teen-Agers Try Adulthood.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cFor whatever reason, we have a population that is reaching sexual maturity earlier, and we also know from all the data collected in the last 10 years\u201415 or 20 years, really\u2014that sexual activity sets in earlier than it used to,\u201d Botstein told Rehm. \u201cSo my argument is a pretty simple one\u2014that 16 is now what 18 was 50 years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n In none of his interviews or writings does Botstein suggest that changes to the average age of sexual maturity should influence the age of consent, nor does he ever discuss romantic or sexual relationships between adults and teenagers. <\/p>\n Some faculty are frustrated by the renewed scrutiny paid to Botstein\u2019s old writings. <\/p>\n \u201cPeople have been taking Botstein\u2019s quotes from his book, Jefferson\u2019s Children<\/em>, which was really in support of the early-college high school concept, and speaking to the fact that young people are intellectually more mature and capable than they used to be,\u201d the anonymous faculty member told Inside Higher Ed.<\/em> \u201c[They\u2019re] then twisting that to make it seem like he was saying they were more sexually mature\u00a0\u2026 That just strikes me as beyond the pale and completely wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n Another faculty member who spoke to Inside Higher Ed<\/em> on the condition of anonymity confirmed what Denker at Take Back Bard said: Any faculty members critical of Botstein are extremely hesitant to speak publicly. Without Botstein\u2019s support, they fear for their jobs as well as a change to the liberal arts mission of the college, the faculty member said. <\/p>\n \u201cBard has taken a very strong position defending the liberal arts as a project, and I think that comes from the president, and that\u2019s a worthy goal. I think people are concerned that if the administration changes, we might be exposed to the kind of neoliberal university management that is taking place elsewhere,\u201d the faculty member said. \u201cAt the same time, I think it\u2019s a problem that, internally, we may not be living up to that standard.\u201d<\/p>\nA Protected President<\/h2>\n
Old Words, New Impact<\/h2>\n