Bard College president to retire after furor over Epstein ties

Amanda Albright and Amanda Gordon, Bloomberg News on May 1, 2026

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Bard College President Leon Botstein is retiring from the institution he led for half a century after revelations about his well-documented relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein came to light.

“After completing 51 years as the president of Bard, I am announcing that I will be retiring from the presidency at the end of this academic year, June 30, 2026,” Botstein wrote in a letter to the campus on Friday.

Botstein spent time with the disgraced financier, including on a trip to the Caribbean in 2012, according to emails released by the U.S. Department of Justice. One message shows photographs of Epstein and Botstein together in an office surrounded by books.

Earlier this year, after Department of Justice documents revealed some communications between Botstein and Epstein, Bard’s board of trustees retained an outside law firm, WilmerHale, to review the links between the two. The firm was also tasked with making recommendations regarding policies related to donor vetting, fundraising and conflicts of interest.

A summary of WilmerHale’s report was released Friday and said that the college president “minimized and was not fully accurate in describing his relationship with Epstein.”

“President Botstein forcefully argues that Bard’s need for funds was paramount,” the document states. “His view was, ‘I would take money from Satan if it permitted me to do God’s work.’”

The document also noted that Botstein made 25 visits to Epstein’s townhouse.

Botstein said that Epstein was a prospective donor, not his friend, and that his interactions were “solely focused on the effort to secure funds for the programs of Bard College,” in a letter to the campus earlier this year.

The revelations upended Botstein’s 50-year stretch leading the school. He helped build the tiny college in New York’s Hudson Valley into an elite liberal arts institution known for its progressive agenda.

Under his leadership, the school built its first endowment which reached $1 billion in assets.

“I am proud to have marshalled, during my tenure, nearly three billion dollars of philanthropy from numerous sources on account of the college’s unique and vital purpose,” Botstein’s letter said. “I am deeply grateful to all the institutions and individuals who have stepped up to support Bard and the people it serves.”