Jeffrey Epstein helped fuel the campus culture wars

[srobin21]

Jeffrey Epstein helped fuel the campus culture wars

 

The academics in the Epstein files aren’t all criminals, but they shared beliefs about whose work matters

 

By Andi Zeisler, Senior Writer – Salon – February 19. 2026

 

For almost two decades, the fiction of a widespread plague of illiberalism and woke overreach on college campuses has captured the imaginations — and, perhaps more to the point, broken the brains — of countless pundits. Commentary about it has been a staple of journalism, a reliable driver of clicks, an always-accessible conservative hobby horse. But with a growing pile of documents linking deceased predator pedophile Jeffrey Epstein to a circle of academic superstars, the disjunction between mass media’s conjuring of a college cancel-culture epidemic and the all-too-real impact of one wealthy predator’s billions in specialized funding is glaring. And as the Trump administration’s anti-diversity efforts and attacks on gender, race, and sexuality studies ramp up, the line between attacks on education and suppression of knowledge keeps blurring.

 

With an executive order declaring DEI efforts “unlawful,” a pledge to rescind federal funding for schools that teach gender diversity and anti-racism, and a virulently anti-trans agenda with no proportional tie to reality, the Trump administration isn’t concerned with differentiating them. The past year has seen institutions including Purdue University, the University of Pittsburgh and the U.S. Naval Academy suspended DEI initiatives, the shutdown of antiracist education, and the shuttering of gender-studies programs at Wichita State University, Towson University, the University of Iowa and, most recently, Texas A&M.

 

In this context, the growing evidence that Jeffrey Epstein funneled billions of dollars to academic superstars who either shared his predilections or were just happy to play along and keep the money flowing is grimly ironic. Who could have imagined that behind the ginned-up panic over college students holding their institutions accountable for shielding harassers lurked a well-oiled history of allowing male faculty to treat access to undergraduates as a perk of the job? Could anyone have guessed that the celebrated titans of social science and psychology Epstein sought out would just happen to think that #MeToo went too far or that women aren’t temperamentally suited to careers in STEM?

 

Full at:

 

https://www.salon.com/2026/02/19/jeffrey-epstein-helped-fuel-the-campus-culture-wars/