COLUMBUS, OHIO — Under rain, snow and bitter cold, small, persistent protests have been held in recent months on Ohio State University’s main campus with one goal: to remove the name of billionaire retail tycoon Les Wexner from the buildings it adorns.
At issue — for unionized nurses at Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center, for former athletes at the Les Wexner Football Complex, and for some student leaders who might pass by the Wexner Center for the Arts near the campus oval — is Wexner’s subject. Well documented association With the late sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein.
Similar outcries arise around a building bearing Wexner’s name at Harvard University and other buildings around the country bearing the names of various Epstein associates, including Steve Tisch, Casey Wasserman, Glenn Dobbin and Howard Lutnick.
It’s all part of Backlash across higher education Against figures with ties to Epstein, who cultivated a vast network that included powerful people in the arts, business and academia. The scrutiny has targeted university donors as well as several academics whose emails with Epstein appear in the latest files, including some who… They resigned.
Wexner has not been charged with any crime related to Epstein, the former financial advisor he says he is He has been “deceived”.
But a group of former Ohio State athletes survived Widespread sexual assault scandal at school claims that Retired L Brands founder Epstein’s generosity toward his alma mater is now tainted by the knowledge that Epstein was involved in many of his family’s spending decisions, including regarding the naming of the football complex.
“The Ohio State University cannot credibly separate itself from these facts, nor can it justify continuing to honor Les Wexner with an athletic facility,” the request to remove the designation said. “To do so would mean ignoring the voices of survivors, former athletes and the broader community who expect accountability, transparency and ethical leadership,” she continued.
At Harvard University, a group of students and faculty at the prestigious Kennedy School targeted the Leslie H. Wexner and Luby Wexner-Sunshine Building. The renaming request filed in March cites Wexner’s “strong ties to Epstein” and says Epstein profited from Wexner, “enabling Epstein to use his wealth and power to traffic and abuse children and women.”
Some Harvard students and alumni also want the Farkas name removed from Farkas Hall, which hosts Hasty Pudding plays Man and woman of the year. The building was renamed in 2011 after a major donation from Andrew Farkas, head of graduate studies for the Hasty Pudding Institute, in honor of his father.
Farkas had a long-standing personal and business relationship with Epstein, including co-owning a marina with him in the Caribbean. He also repeatedly asked Epstein to donate to Hasty Pudding. Between approximately 2013 and 2019, Epstein regularly donated $50,000 annually to secure top-tier donor status, for a total of more than $300,000.
“As I have said repeatedly, I am deeply sorry that I met this person, but at no time did I act inappropriately,” Farkas said in a statement.
Protests against buildings bearing the names of Epstein associates are growing at some US universities.
Just last weekend, the student body at Haverford College in Pennsylvania voted to urge President Wendy Raymond to move forward with the Allison renaming process & Howard Lutnick library. The building is named after the US Secretary of Commerce who faced… Calls for resignation Because of his relationship with Epstein.
Raymond V said February open letter She wasn’t ready to do that. In a statement to The Associated Press following the vote on Sunday, Raymond said she respected the process and would respond to the decision within the usual 30-day period.
In Ohio, petitions against Wexner’s name work their way through five steps Conduct the reviewMost of which take place outside the scope of public display and without a specific timetable. “I believe the process is comprehensive, fair and open, and I promise you that we will consider every application fully,” new university president Ravi Bellamkonda said.
A Harvard spokesperson confirmed that the school had received the request to remove the name related to Wexner but would not comment further. This will be the university’s second name change, after John Winthrop House, named after a Harvard professor and predecessor of the same name, was renamed Winthrop House in July due to its association with slavery.
Tufts University, home of the Tisch Library Steve Tisch The Sports and Fitness Center said it was continuing to look into the matter. The library moved to clarify that it was not named after Steve, but rather, in 1992, after his father, Preston Tisch, a respected alumnus. SportsCenter removed a set of Steve Tisch’s handprints over spring break. The university said it was part of a planned renovation.
University of California Wasserman Football Center and Stony Brook University Dobbin The Family Sports Performance Center is also named after Epstein’s associates.
The current uproar bears some resemblance to the controversy surrounding the wealthy The Sacklers’ fault In the deadly opioid crisis, because in both cases the institutions were involved They received huge sums of money From the family.
Some major institutions — including museums in New York and Paris, Tufts, and Oxford University in England — have removed the Sackler name, but Harvard has chosen not to do so. In a 15-page report explaining its 2024 decision, the university said the legacy of Arthur M. Sackler, whose company Purdue Pharma manufactured the powerful opioid OxyContin, was “complicated, ambiguous and debatable.”
The Epstein Fellows whose names are on campus buildings are typically generous donors, as well as alumni.
For example, Wexner, his wife Abigail, and their charities have given the state of Ohio more than $200 million over the years. This included $100 million for Wexner Medical Center; At least $15 million for the Wexner Center, a contemporary art museum named after Wexner’s father, Harry; And $5 million is divided with a foundation run by Epstein to build the soccer complex. The Wexner family gave another $42 million to the Harvard Kennedy School.
Universities are serious about their gift acceptance criteria while also recognizing that the behavior of individual donors may be judged differently over time, said Anne Bergeron, a museum consultant and author who specializes in the ethics of building naming rights in the cultural sector.
“It is not surprising that many of these attitudes arise within the university field, because among students — especially the younger generation — there is almost no tolerance for associating with anyone who does not represent the best of humanity,” she said.
She described this as a “moment of reckoning” for universities, and said that they must be careful not to show a trade-off in the names of their buildings.
Columbus-area resident Michael Oser expressed the frustration of some advocates for keeping the Wexner name in a recent letter to the editor of the Columbus Dispatch.
“Ohio State University took the money. Constructed the buildings. Cut the ribbons. Smiled for the pictures. There were no formal ‘morals clauses’ attached at the time, just gratitude and applause,” he wrote. “Now, years later, some want to play moral arbiter while the university keeps the money and the concrete. This is not accountability. This is convenience.”
Lauren Barnes, a master’s student at the Kennedy School who is leading the effort to remove Wexner’s name, said she struggles most days as a sexual assault survivor and mother of a 14-year-old to get into a building bearing a name associated with Epstein.
“Thinking of all the children in this world who deserve to be safe, and all the survivors on campus who have to walk under the Wexner name, I know what it means to have my heart racing and my palms sweating,” she said. “I would hate for anyone else to feel like that walking under that name and being treated like that everywhere on campus.”
One Ohio protester, Audrey Brill, told a local ABC affiliate that it’s now “sickening” to think about women giving birth to babies at Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center “given everything we know about where that money went” — and she feels removing Wexner’s name could help.
Some protesters also want the name of Dr. Mark Landon, a prominent Ohio gynecologist who received five-figure quarterly payments from Epstein between 2001 and 2005, to be removed from the visitors’ lounge of the hospital’s new 26-story, $2 billion tower. Landon said the money was intended for biotech investment consulting for Wexner, not for health care for Epstein or any of his victims.
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Casey contributed from Boston.