BREAKING TIES TO EPSTEIN
Universities face efforts to remove names listed in files linked to probes
Lauren Barnes, a student in the Kennedy School's master's program, stands April 1 in front of the Leslie H. Wexner Building at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass.
Retail mogul Les Wexner endowed multiple buildings at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, including a medical center (above) and football complex (below).
Harvard University's Farkas Hall was endowed by alum Andrew Farkas.
SPOTLIGHT| HIGHER EDUCATION
Protests were held in recent months on the Ohio State University main campus with a single goal in mind: removing billionaire retail mogul Les Wexner's name from buildings.
The issue for union nurses at OSU's Wexner Medical Center, former athletes at the Les Wexner Football Complex and some student leaders who walk past the Wexner Center for the Arts near the campus oval is Wexner's well-documented association with the late sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein.
Similar efforts arose over a Wexner-named building at Harvard University and others around the country whose names appeared in the Epstein files, including Steve Tisch, Casey Wasserman, Glenn Dubin and Howard Lutnick.
It's part of the backlash across higher education against figures with ties to Epstein, who cultivated an extensive network including powerful people in the arts, business and academia. Donors and several academics, including some who resigned, faced scrutiny over their emails with Epstein that surfaced in recently released files.
Wexner complaints
Wexner wasn't charged with a crime in connection with Epstein; Wexner claimed the one-time financial adviser "duped" him.
Still, former Ohio State athletes who survived a sweeping sexual abuse scandal at the school argue that the retired L Brands founder's generosity to his alma mater is now tainted by the knowledge that Epstein was entangled in many of his family's spending decisions, including around the football complex's naming.
"Ohio State University cannot credibly separate itself from these facts, nor can it justify continuing to honor Les Wexner with an athletic facility," their naming removal request read. "To do so is to ignore the voices of survivors, former athletes, and the broader community who expect accountability, transparency, and moral leadership."
At Harvard, a group of students and faculty at the prestigious Kennedy School targeted the Leslie H. Wexner Building and the Wexner-Sunshine Lobby. The renaming request submitted in March cites Wexner's "strong ties to Epstein" and argues Epstein profited off Wexner, "which enabled Epstein to use his wealth and power to traffic and abuse children and women."
Some Harvard students and alumni also want the Farkas name removed from Farkas Hall, which hosts the Hasty Pudding Theatricals Man and Woman of the Year. The building was renamed in 2011 following a significant donation from Andrew Farkas, graduate chairman of the Hasty Pudding Institute, in honor of his father.
Farkas had a longtime personal and business relationship with Epstein, including co-owning a marina with him in the Caribbean. He repeatedly asked Epstein to donate to Hasty Pudding. Between about 2013 and 2019, Epstein regularly donated $50,000 annually.
"As I've said repeatedly, I deeply regret ever having met this individual, but at no time have I conducted myself inappropriately," Farkas said.
Pressure building
Pushback against buildings named for Epstein associates and others in the Epstein files is growing on some U.S. campuses.
In recent days, the student body at Haverford College in Pennsylvania voted to urge President Wendy Raymond to rename the Allison & Howard Lutnick Library, which is named for the U.S.commerce secretary who faced resignation calls over his relationship with Epstein.
At Ohio State, pleas against the Wexner name face a five-step review procedure, most of it outside public view and with no set timeline.
A spokesman for Harvard confirmed the school received the Wexner-related name removal request but would not comment further.
Tufts University, home to the Tisch Library and the Steve Tisch Sports and Fitness Center, said it continues to look at the matter. The library moved to clarify that it was not named for Steve but for his father, Preston Tisch, an honored alum. The sports center removed a set of Steve Tisch's handprints, which the university said was part of a planned renovation.
UCLA's Wasserman Football Center and Stony Brook University's Dubin Family Athletic Performance Center also are named for individuals who appear in the files.
Lauren Barnes, a student in the Kennedy School's master's program leading the effort to remove Wexner's name, said as a survivor of sexual abuse and as the mother of a 14-year-old, she struggles to walk into a building with a name linked to Epstein.
"Thinking about all the children in this world that deserve safety and also all the survivors on campus that have to walk under the Wexner name, I know what that's like to have my heart race and my hands get sweaty," she said. "I hate that anyone else has to have that feeling walking under that name and just dealing with it kind of everywhere on campus."
Names tied to giving
The current clamor bears some resemblance to the controversy that surrounded the wealthy Sackler family's culpability in the deadly opioid crisis, because in both cases the institutions involved received vast sums of money from the family.
Some major institutions — including museums in New York and Paris, Tufts and the University of Oxford in England — removed the Sackler name, but Harvard chose not to.
In a 15-page report explaining its 2024 decision, the university said the legacy of Arthur M. Sackler, whose company Purdue Pharma made the potent opioid OxyContin, was "complex, ambiguous and debatable."
The Epstein-tainted names on campus buildings also are typically generous donors, as well as alumni.
Wexner, wife Abigail and their charities gave Ohio State more than $200 million over the years, for example. That included $100 million to benefit the Wexner Medical Center; at least $15 million for the Wexner Center, an art museum named for Wexner's father, Harry; and a $5 million split with an Epstein-run foundation toward construction of the football complex. The Wexners gave another $42 million to the Harvard Kennedy School.
Anne Bergeron, a museum consultant and author who specializes in the ethics of building naming rights in the cultural sector, said universities are serious about their gift acceptance standards while recognizing the conduct of individual donors may be judged differently over time.
"It's no surprise that a lot of these situations arise within the university sphere," she said, "because with students — especially the younger generation — there is virtually no tolerance for being associated with anyone who doesn't represent the best of humanity."
She called this "a moment of reckoning" for universities and said they have to guard against the appearance of a quid pro quo in their building namings.
Michael Oser, a Columbus-area resident, articulated the frustration of some defenders of retaining the Wexner name in a recent letter-to-the-editor of The Columbus Dispatch.
OSU took the money and constructed the buildings, he wrote. "Now, years later, some want to play moral referee while the university keeps the cash and the concrete. That's not accountability. That's convenience."
