The curse is hereby lifted! » « I’ve been shirking today

There’s no penalty to enabling pedophiles, I guess

My first surprise on reading this article about Bard College was learning that they’d had the same president for 51 years. That’s astonishing to me — I’ve been at one university for a quarter century, and I’ve seen a half dozen chancellors come and go. I am accustomed to the transient nature of administrators, and think it’s disturbing that one person would have control of a university for that long. Bard College is located near New York, though, and while about the same size as UMM, it is vastly more wealthy, owning lots of valuable property, with valuable connections. I’m sure it was profitable to be president there.

But no more! The president of Bard College, Leon Botstein, is stepping down. You may not be surprised by the reason: he was a good buddy with Jeffrey Epstein.

WilmerHale’s report, released on Friday, detailed Botstein’s extensive in-person contacts with Epstein, including “approximately 25 visits to Epstein’s townhouse, a two-day visit to Epstein’s Little St. James Island and a flight to the island with one such woman (along with Leon Black’s family), two visits by Epstein to Bard and to various concerts and recitals accompanied by multiple women who have since been identified as victims of Epstein, and multiple requests that President Botstein help such women — in the form of invitations to concerts and rehearsals, visits with the women and their parents, advice on their musical careers, etc.”

The Times Union has previously reported on Epstein’s visits to Bard’s campus in Annandale-on-Hudson as well as Epstein’s efforts to leverage his relationship with Botstein to lure women, including musicians, into his orbit, whom Epstein later victimized.

Holy crap. What a horror story — I’m sure Botstein is now persona non grata on campus and the college is rushing to repair the reputational damage of being led by an enabler of pedophiles. What parent would want to send their child to a college with such a parasite roaming the campus?

But no. Botstein is going to be stinking up the place for a good long while.

He will retire from the presidency but said he would remain as a faculty member, teacher and musician. He also said he will continue to operate the Bard Music Festival, SummerScape, as well as the Bard Conservatory, and will live on campus at Finberg House.

I don’t understand how they wouldn’t simply evict the guy out of hand. So this old creep is going to be hanging about with students and alumni and faculty until he drops dead?

It’s amazing how no one affiliated with Epstein has suffered any real consequences, other than Ghislane Maxwell, who recently got transferred to a cushier prison and has politicians considering granting clemency. I’ve never supported a rich pedophile, which, in hindsight, is looking like a poor career decision.

The curse is hereby lifted! » « I’ve been shirking today

Comments

  1. says

    It’s interesting how none of the prominent people connected to Epstein have committed suicide. They are apparently all arrogant enough that they think they can ride it out.

  2. seversky says

    It’s appalling how these people cam make a mockery of justice. A large number of credible complaints are quietly swept under the carpet while not one of Epstein’s clients has even been indicted. And we can’t expect anything from the FBI under the current leadership of J Edgar Boozer.(nice nickname which, apparently, annoys him no end) Maxwell is the token convict but no one more powerful, further up the “chain of command” has been punished, rather like the My Lai massacre or the Abu Graib abuses, Junior ranks carry the can while the higher echelons get away scot-free.

  3. AstroLad says

    …has politicians considering granting clemency buying her silence. FIFY.

  4. birgerjohansson says

    He forgot the Tang suit that is compulsory for Bond villains.

    Question: Did Blofeld ever hang out with sexual predators? I don’t think so. We have a category of supervillains that have higher standards than college/university presidents.

  5. drewl, Mental Toss Flycoon says

    I’m pretty sure that is the college from the Steely Dan song “My Old School”.

  6. hillaryrettig1 says

    Kudos to the students who continued pushing for his ouster, despite getting nothing but condescending pushback from the school’s board, and also from the NYT.

  7. drmarcushill says

    If someone has been running an institution the size and complexity of a university for 51 years, the governors/trustees are a bit suspect. Either they (or their predecessors at this stage) appointed someone without the necessary leadership experience, or they have kept someone on way past the point they should have retired.

  8. raven says

    I’d never heard of Bard college.

    Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, has a total enrollment of approximately 2,922 students, including around 2,453 undergraduates and 469 graduate students (as of fall 2023). The student body is known for being roughly 57% female and 43% male, featuring a highly diverse, international, and largely full-time population.

    It is a small private college with around 3,000 students. It is also expensive.

    For the 2025–26 academic year, Bard College’s tuition is $68,850, with total estimated costs (including housing, food, and fees) approaching nearly $90,000 annually. The college meets 100% of demonstrated need for early applicants. Comprehensive financial aid is available, with roughly 74% of students receiving institutional grants.

    I’m not going there and still have sticker shock.

  9. says

    birgerjohansson @ 4:

    Question: Did Blofeld ever hang out with sexual predators? I don’t think so. We have a category of supervillains that have higher standards than college/university presidents.

    Per the Wikipedia article on Blofeld:

    The novel Thunderball indicates that Blofeld wants to be a man of honour, or at least pose as one. During a meeting of SPECTRE agents, he refers to the kidnapping of a teenage girl, who was to be returned unharmed once her father paid the ransom. However, he refunded half the money after learning that she had been raped by her abductor Pierre Borraud (codename No. 12), and he kills Borraud by electrocuting him in his chair.

    So, canonically, SPECTRE has a lower tolerance of sexual predators than the average US institution.

  10. microraptor says

    The sexual predator Blofeld spent the most time around was Bond.

  11. John Morales says

    [OT]

    microraptor, not canonically. I’ve read all the books.

    Bond partook, he didn’t predate. Written as a womaniser, sure.
    But most certainly neither a predator or a pedophile.

    —

    Re the topic itself, there’s quite a list of people who resigned or otherwise lost their tenures and jobs due to association with Epstein; as usual, the USA is a bit of an outlier here.

    (E.g. that Mountbatten dude)

  14. John Morales says

    [FWIW, your link includes the ATB code (“Attribution Token for Browser”) which is a tracking tool; I myself clean links]

  15. microraptor says

    @11: If you’ve read the books then you should not be surprised that Bond’s ideas of what counted as consent were pretty loose. And included “curing” lesbians.

  16. John Morales says

    But not predatory or pedophilic. Contrary to your initial claim.
    I am not defending the womanising, I am disputing your characterisation.
    Canon is clear.

    (Note the women were written as rather enthusiastic about it)

  17. microraptor says

    At no point did I say anything about Bond being a pedophile, cease with the strawman. He did regularly pursue women after they’d said no while sober until they said yes after having a few drinks. That ain’t above board moral activity, dude, that’s rape. The books don’t describe him as predatory because the books are written from his perspective and he’s the hero. Not sure why this is a hill you want to die on.

  19. Pierce R. Butler says

    John Morales @ # 14 – amazing how little a search for “Attribution Token for Browser” turns up before veering into Access Tokens & other tangents.

    Digging through my email etc archives, I find that DuckDuckGo apparently started adding that to its search strings somewhen in April. In this search done just now, I note that DDG used the same 6-byte string as it did in my # 12 – very sub-Palantir slack.

  20. John Morales says

    At no point did I say anything about Bond being a pedophile, cease with the strawman.

    What’s the topic? There’s no penalty to enabling pedophiles, I guess.

    What’s your take? “Bond’s ideas of what counted as consent were pretty loose”.

    How did you express that?
    Ah yes, ‘The sexual predator Blofeld spent the most time around was Bond’.

    Again: I have read the books.

    Not sure why this is a hill you want to die on.

    There is no hill, no death. Just correction of an improper characterisation.

    James Bond (the literary character) is not a rapist. Not a sexual predator.
    He is a womaniser. He is certainly coded male.
    I’ve written about it before.

    cf. https://proxy.freethought.online/singham/2019/07/14/crank-up-the-right-wing-outrage-machine-the-next-james-bond-is-a-black-woman/

  21. John Morales says

    In this search done just now, I note that DDG used the same 6-byte string as it did in my # 12 – very sub-Palantir slack.

    You changed your OS/browser combo in between? :)

  23. StevoR says

    @20. John Morales :

    James Bond (the literary character) is not a rapist. Not a sexual predator.
    He is a womaniser.

    Hmm.. Except that remember what was noted by microraptor in #17 above :

    At no point did I say anything about Bond being a pedophile, cease with the strawman. He did regularly pursue women after they’d said no while sober until they said yes after having a few drinks. That ain’t above board moral activity, dude, that’s rape.

    Emphasis added.

    I haven’t read the books myself – not overly intrested in the whole Bond franchises – though I have seen some of the movies or bits of them over the years and don’t recall that occurring there – but wasn’t really paying close attention and years ago.

    Anyhow, if that’s true then yeah, Bond is a rapist which, yes, makes him a sexual predator. As well as a womaniser.

  24. John Morales says

    [meta[

    StevoR, again:

    What’s the topic? There’s no penalty to enabling pedophiles, I guess.

    Post title. So, that’s the topic. Not womanisers.

    Not Warren Beatty, more Jimmy Saville.

    Get it?

    I haven’t read the books myself

    Doesn’t stop you from opining about them, does it?

  25. submoron says

    John Morales, have you looked at the lives of the individuals who are said to have inspired the character of James Bond? I’m thinking of Duško Popov, known as agent Tricycle. His codename is sometimes said to be based on his network of three agents and sometimes to his sexual preferences. He was certainly an extreme womaniser but I can’t say more than that as I’ve only just got the book ‘Codename Tricycle’. He stands in contrast to agent Zig Zag Eddie Chapman, an utter crook whose deceit of the Abwehr was his only redeeming character. He once infected a young woman of ‘good family’ with a venereal disease and threatened to tell her parents that she had infected him, forcing her to pay blackmail money

  26. John Morales says

    submoron, interesting debouchement that garners such activity!
    Bond — James Bond!

    John Morales, have you looked at the lives of the individuals who are said to have inspired the character of James Bond?

    Only vaguely, in the sense that I (decades ago) read about Fleming himself and his inspiration.

    I do know that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inspirations_for_James_Bond#Origins_of_the_name

    On the morning of 17 February 1952, Ian Fleming started writing what would become his first book, Casino Royale, at his Goldeneye estate in Jamaica. He typed out 2,000 words in the morning, directly from his own experiences and imagination[4] and finished work on the manuscript in just over a month,[5] completing it on 18 March 1952.[6] Fleming took the name for his character from that of the American ornithologist James Bond, a Caribbean bird expert and author of the definitive field guide Birds of the West Indies; Fleming, a keen birdwatcher himself, had a copy of Bond’s guide and he later explained to the ornithologist’s wife that “It struck me that this brief, unromantic, Anglo-Saxon and yet very masculine name was just what I needed, and so a second James Bond was born”.[7]

    —

    Anyway, so much for repercussions about Epstein linkages.

    (Again, quite a list, and moreso outside the USA)

    Look, you want to worry about the inspirations for a fictional character, go for it.

    But the canon remains what it is.

  27. StevoR says

    @24. John Morales :

    [meta] StevoR, again:

    “What’s the topic? There’s no penalty to enabling pedophiles, I guess.” (- John Morales #20)

    (Edited for clarity)

    Huh. That is NOT what I wrote or asked. That’s what you wrote in #20.

    That was also the title of the OP.

    The discourse has since shifted and evolved from there with James Bond being discussed as a fictional pop culture example.

    You claimed in response to #15 microraptor in your #16 that :

    But (Bond is -ed) not predatory or pedophilic. Contrary to your initial claim.

    Plus wrote in your #20 as I quoted before in my #23 :

    James Bond (the literary character) is not a rapist. Not a sexual predator.

    But as microraptor pointed out in #17 which I then quoted for truth in #23 Bond was told ‘No’ by women when they were sober but then refused to accept that answer and had sex with them when they were drunk – which is rape. An intoxicated person not being able to give free consent. So actually Bond in the books IS a rapist and sexual predator because he refuses to accept rejection and uses alcohol as a drug to impair judgement then rape his victims.

    This is what you, John Morlaes still seem to be simply denying without any evidence or agument in your #20.

    Bond isn’t a pedophile – and nobody here is claiming that he is – but Bond is a rapist – at least in the books if microraptor’s description is correct.

    Is microraptor wrong about that? Not having read the books I dunno but I’m going to tentatively , with no reason to do otherwise, assume microraptor is accurate.

    “I haven’t read the books myself.” -StevoR #23.
    Doesn’t stop you from opining about them, does it?

    It doesn’t stop me from accepting that someone who HAS read the books is presumably telling the truth about them when they tell us what happens in them.

    Accepting that someone else is telling the truth when there’s no apparent reason or motive to think they are lying or mistaken is the general reasonable default isn’t it? Or do you assume or claim that we need to disregard what people who have read the books have said happens in them as the first assumption or reaction?

    Are you saying microraptor is wrong when he notes that in the books Bond would :

    … regularly pursue women after they’d said no while sober until they said yes after having a few drinks.

    Or do you think that doesn’t count as rape somehow?

    Or will you accept that whilst NOT a pedophile, Bond is actually a rapist at least as the character is written in the novels?

  28. StevoR says

    PS Google search finds :

    https://oceanhero.today/web?q=Did+Bond+rape+women+in+books&utm_medium=Extension:omnibox&method=oceanheroextensiontopbar&utm_source=Chrome

    From which :

    Cary Fukunaga, the director of No Time To Die, the latest instalment in the James Bond franchise, triggered a slew of headlines this week when he said what we already knew: James Bond is “basically” a rapist.

    …(snip)..

    In his comments, Fukunaga appeared to refer to a notorious scene in 1965’s Thunderball when Sean Connery’s Bond rapes Patricia Fearing, a nurse at the health clinic Shrublands.

    … (snip)..

    Of course, Bond is a sexual predator in many of the films – and Ian Fleming’s books with a reference to the “sweet tang of rape” are equally, if not more, troubling. Rather than sanitising the franchise or side-stepping the misogyny and racism that have been essential ingredients of our most popular and well-loved film franchises, perhaps we should instead acknowledge that some of our most revered, lauded and celebrated cultural characters have been lionised precisely because of their abhorrent behaviour. Rape is trivialised and repackaged as playful seduction in Bond films because that’s how it’s been treated in reality.

    Source : https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/james-bond-no-time-to-die-cary-fukunaga-b1927221.html

    Plus excerpt from another source from that first search link :

    The revisions have avoided tackling sexist and homophobic terms and descriptions, however, which the novels retain, including phrases such as the “sweet tang of rape,” and “blithering women,” while homosexuality is referred to as a “stubborn disability,” the UK’s Daily Telegraph reports.

    One scene in a striptease club has been slightly revised, but altogether, it would be impossible to change Bond’s sexist attitude, which remains central to the character. As Sam Barsanti wrote for culture website AV Club, “editing that stuff out of the James Bond series might make them structurally unsound.”

    For Australian author Clementine Ford, who has written on sexism in the Bond universe, the goal of retroactively erasing the racism of the Bond universe is “to ensure Bond remains both admirable and popular in a modern climate,” she told Time magazine.

    In that context, “one has to ask why sexism and the dehumanization of women is not considered anathema to Bond’s appeal but central to it,” she added.

    James Bond “has a history of raping, objectifying, and using women. And Bond movies often glamorized that behavior. The character taught generations of men that misogyny was cool,” wrote Eliana Dockterman in 2021, in her Time magazine review of “No Time to Die,”

    Source : https://www.dw.com/en/james-bond-sexist-but-not-racist/a-64868925

    As you can see from my first link here there’s plenty more.

  29. StevoR says

    Like this source here titled ‘I Rewatched Original James Bond Films, and Oh My God He Is Literally a Sex Offender’ by Brooke Ivey Johnson which is on the early films but still – yeah.

    Bond was absolutely a rapist.

    CONTENT WARNING : Rape & sexual assault references, misogyny references. In article and following excerpt

    From

    the

    link

    here :

    https://www.popdust.com/james-bond-rapist-2646812917

    For those already rolling their eyes and ready to call me a liberal snowflake, let me be clear: I’m not talking about grey areas of consent or questionable comments. I’m talking about Agent 007 literally holding a woman down as she struggles to free herself as he forces his mouth on hers.

    I’m talking about Mr. Shaken-Not-Stirred pulling a spa attendant into a sauna as she screams in protest. I’m talking about multiple instances of Bond ignoring clearly worded refusal from women and forcing himself on them anyway.

    Some notable moments include a scene in Gold Finger when … (snip.)..

    …Bond rapes a famous Bond girl whose very name probly won’t pass filters here. An alternative slang word for cat.

  30. hillaryrettig1 says

    Botstein was a kind of a rock star in his youth. He made the cover of the NYT Sunday mag, IIRC, for his work revitalizing Bard, plus his glamour as a conductor. I guess the glow lasted for decades–although the corrupt money must have also helped.

  31. John Morales says

    StevoR, what part of ‘I’ve read the books’ confused you?

    (The movies are Broccoli)

    Here, for you: https://www.existentialennui.com/2010/10/is-ian-flemings-james-bond-really.html

    Or take Fleming himself:

    Moving on to sex, he observed that it was a perfectly acceptable subject for Shakespeare so why not for him. [‘All history is sex and violence…Bond has one girl per book approximately, he’s a bachelor and he moves around the world pretty rapidly and I don’t see any great harm in that myself.’] In the films of course, EON had their infamous formula that required three women (or Bond girls); by the time of the interview the first two films had been released, and already the treatment of women by Bond was being defined in the public’s eye by the films rather than what was written in the novels.
    (https://midcenturybond.wordpress.com/2020/03/28/flemings-final-1964-interviews/)

  32. Militant Agnostic says

    From Pierce Butlers Mountbatten link @12

    Ten years previously Harris (an accomplice of Mountbatten) achieved notoriety in a sex scandal involving a clergyman who was unfrocked for associating with prostitutes and later eaten by a lion.

    What happened to the clergyman sounds a bit harsh.

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