The director of a prestigious research lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) resigned on Saturday, and the school’s president ordered an independent investigation amid an uproar over the lab’s ties to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Joi Ito, director of MIT’s Media Lab, resigned from both the lab and from his position as a professor at the school, university president L. Rafael Reif said.
The resignation was first reported by the New York Times.
Ito’s resignation comes after The New Yorker reported late on Friday that Media Lab had a more extensive fundraising relationship with Epstein than it previously acknowledged and tried to conceal the extent of the relationship.
Epstein killed himself in jail on Aug. 10 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
US federal prosecutors in New York had charged the 66-year-old with sex trafficking and conspiracy, alleging he sexually abused girls over several years in the early 2000s.
In a letter to the MIT community on Saturday, Reif called the allegations in The New Yorker “deeply disturbing.”
“Because the accusations in the story are extremely serious, they demand an immediate, thorough and independent investigation,” Reif wrote. “This morning, I asked MIT’s general counsel to engage a prominent law firm to design and conduct this process.”
Ito has also resigned from the boards of The New York Times Co, the MacArthur Foundation, and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, each announced.
Reif said last month that the university took about US$800,000 from Epstein over 20 years.
That announcement followed the resignation of two prominent researchers from Media Lab over revelations the lab and Ito took money from Epstein after he served time a decade ago for sex offenses involving underage girls.
The New Yorker reports Epstein arranged at least US$7.5 million in donations, including US$2 million from Microsoft founder Bill Gates and US$5.5 million from investor Leon Black.
Although MIT listed Epstein as “disqualified’ in its donor database, the Media Lab did not stop taking gifts from him and labeled his donations as anonymous, The New Yorker reported.
Last week, Ito said Epstein gave him US$525,000 for the Media Lab and another US$1.2 million for his own investment funds.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing