Jesus. Who lets a guy get away with that for so freaking long?
Most people would if it’s normalized. Not long ago Saudi Arabian money and PRC money was just fine. It’s hard not to take it when it’s about survival.
Joi Ito Resigns from M.I.T. Media Lab After Outcry over Jeffrey Epstein Ties
21–30 of 770 posts
Re: Joi Ito Resigns from M.I.T. Media Lab After Outcry over Jeffrey Epstein Ties
#22This seemed inevitable after the New Yorker article yesterday detailing how Ito and his team hid Epstein's involvement from the university, which had disqualified Epstein as a donor. Taking money from a dirty source is one thing; hiding it from the university because they've blacklisted that person in particular is about as unforgivable a crime as you'll find in academia
I remember similar stories about people who took money from Harvey Weinstein, for example there was an AIDS nonprofit he gave millions to.
It all highlights the difficult job facing people tasked with taking money from donors in this way. They won't always have 20/20 hindsight. They may learn about sketchiness after they already took the money. They may be so blinded by what they see as generosity and good will that they may be less able to see character flaws. I am not saying any of this happened here, but I would not like to be in a position to make these decisions.
Re: Joi Ito Resigns from M.I.T. Media Lab After Outcry over Jeffrey Epstein Ties
#23I'm not sure if this is self-aware or not, but Ito's fund is called:"Neoteny", meaning "the retention of child-like attributes through adulthood". Apparently, Epstein's funds / projects were named with innuendos. (edited) https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/neoteny#section-over...
On his website it is defined as "the retention of child-like attributes through adulthood."
Re: Joi Ito Resigns from M.I.T. Media Lab After Outcry over Jeffrey Epstein Ties
#24>Mr. Ito has been a board member of The New York Times Company since 2012. The company did not immediately comment on Mr. Ito’s decision to leave M.I.T.
This is the 7th paragraph in the story. Shouldn't it be higher up?
Re: Joi Ito Resigns from M.I.T. Media Lab After Outcry over Jeffrey Epstein Ties
#25Someone who was asked by Ito to be on the MIT Disobedience Award jury wrote a long tweet thread yesterday calling out Reid Hoffman for his defense of Ito: https://twitter.com/anandwrites/status/1169952673988300800
I don't think that thread shows that Hoffman defended Ito, despite the author's claims. I'm basically willing to take Hoffman's responses at face value. Clearly there was an ongoing investigation, as demonstrated by Ito's resignation today. When news broke about Ito and Epstein last month, Giriharadas was pretty far down on the list of people who Ito needed to answer to (since he was just part of what I imagine to be a mostly ceremonial award committee.) I see evidence that Hoffman didn't think Giriharadas should be dictating the course of the investigation, but not evidence that Hoffman tried to impede in any way. After all, this same Disobedience award went to #MeToo activists last year...
Ultimately, this thread does feel a lot like the author making a dreadful scandal about himself.
Re: Joi Ito Resigns from M.I.T. Media Lab After Outcry over Jeffrey Epstein Ties
#26Good. Here’s a particularly damning passage from Ronan Farrow’s New Yorker article [1]: > According to Swenson, Ito had informed Cohen that Epstein “never goes into any room without his two female ‘assistants,’ ” whom he wanted to bring to the meeting at the Media Lab. Swenson objected to this, too, and it was decided that the assistants would be allowed to accompany Epstein but would wait outside the meeting room. >…
Sorry, I don't get it. Somebody having assistants who look like models and are from Eastern Europe is suspicious of trafficking women? How? Why? I have heard about Epstein, obviously with hindsight all sorts of things he did can be seen in a new light. I just don't understand what is so damning about the passage above. Would somebody who is trafficking women really take them everywhere he goes? I thought it would be…
Because he had already been convicted before and was (as Swenson learned previously, as you can read in the op cited new-yorker article on the issue) banned from being a MIT donor for this reason.
Context matters.
Re: Joi Ito Resigns from M.I.T. Media Lab After Outcry over Jeffrey Epstein Ties
#27Good. Here’s a particularly damning passage from Ronan Farrow’s New Yorker article [1]: > According to Swenson, Ito had informed Cohen that Epstein “never goes into any room without his two female ‘assistants,’ ” whom he wanted to bring to the meeting at the Media Lab. Swenson objected to this, too, and it was decided that the assistants would be allowed to accompany Epstein but would wait outside the meeting room. >…
Sorry, I don't get it. Somebody having assistants who look like models and are from Eastern Europe is suspicious of trafficking women? How? Why? I have heard about Epstein, obviously with hindsight all sorts of things he did can be seen in a new light. I just don't understand what is so damning about the passage above. Would somebody who is trafficking women really take them everywhere he goes? I thought it would be…
Yes, he would, especially if he thought he had enough leverage to protect himself from the consequences.
Re: Joi Ito Resigns from M.I.T. Media Lab After Outcry over Jeffrey Epstein Ties
#28Good. Here’s a particularly damning passage from Ronan Farrow’s New Yorker article [1]: > According to Swenson, Ito had informed Cohen that Epstein “never goes into any room without his two female ‘assistants,’ ” whom he wanted to bring to the meeting at the Media Lab. Swenson objected to this, too, and it was decided that the assistants would be allowed to accompany Epstein but would wait outside the meeting room. >…
Relevant to that quote, it's important to point out that this kind of influence peddling fell apart, not when Epstein himself got caught, but when enough people at a high level decided they didn't want to be part of it. Ito himself clearly viewed himself as a kind of fellow traveller in Epstein's world (no idea if that involves sex trafficing! That's not my point!). Gates did too.
But Signe Swenson wasn't as willing to put up with that, even if she couldn't personally stop it. And by 2016, she was in the room too.
You can look at this through a "fuck the patriarchy" lens or insist on the fact that this was just people being people. But at the end of the day this is why diversity matters. Epstein's lures only worked on hetero men, and he fell when faced with a world of influential women.
Re: Joi Ito Resigns from M.I.T. Media Lab After Outcry over Jeffrey Epstein Ties
#29I'm not sure if this is self-aware or not, but Ito's fund is called:"Neoteny", meaning "the retention of child-like attributes through adulthood". Apparently, Epstein's funds / projects were named with innuendos. (edited) https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/neoteny#section-over...
No, 'neoteny' doesn't "usually" mean "animals with childlike features", but rather "the retention of juvenile features into adulthood". It's conjectured that a lot of humanity's advanced intelligence & culture has been achieved with the help of our species' extended retention of juvenile learning-capacity & neural plasticity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoteny_in_humans
Changed for clarity, but my point stands. It's kind of funny in retrospect.
Re: Joi Ito Resigns from M.I.T. Media Lab After Outcry over Jeffrey Epstein Ties
#30Why would Bill Gates need Epstein to be the middle man for his $2 mil donation? Why didn't he just donate to the Media Lab directly? And given his insistence that the donation be made anonymously, it seems like he was well aware the optics would be bad if the public knew there was a connection between the two, and yet he chose to make the donation through Epstein anyway.
Bill Gates has given many times personally to the Media Lab secretly. He gave on this occasion on Epstein's request. To him, this was just a financer asking if he could give some cash to the Media Lab, considering Gates had donated before, AFAIK.