Harvard’s decision to install Mary Erdoes — the longtime CEO of the asset and wealth-management arm of JPMorgan Chase & Co. — onto the board of its endowment manager comes at a particularly fraught moment. Recent unsealed documents and public reporting reveal that Erdoes maintained regular contact with Epstein while he was a client, despite numerous warnings and widely known allegations of criminal sexual misconduct. Many of those communications have been described as “highly personal” and show that even after Epstein’s 2008 conviction for soliciting a minor, executives under Erdoes’s supervision continued to handle his accounts — a decision that federal investigators now say reflects possible institutional complicity. With the broader scandal intensifying, Harvard’s choice to elevate Erdoes — rather than distance the university from those links — reads as a tone-deaf move that prioritizes financial pedigree over moral accountability.
In making that appointment, Harvard risks underestimating how the optics — not to mention the facts — will land with students, alumni, and the public at large. To many, the decision signals indifference to the victims of Epstein’s crimes and raises serious doubts about Harvard’s commitment to ethical oversight and transparency. By putting someone closely tied to Epstein’s financial network in charge of stewarding the university’s endowment, Harvard has exposed itself to charges of hypocrisy and moral failure — undermining trust at a time when institutions everywhere are being called to answer for their links to abuse and exploitation.
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Harvard Endowment Appoints 3 New Directors, Including JPMorgan Exec Who Managed Epstein’s Bank Accounts | News | The Harvard Crimson
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