On the last evening of Leon Botstein’s tenure as president of Bard College, I spoke with someone who’s worked as a driver in Bard’s transportation department. I asked him if he’d ever had Botstein as a passenger.
“No,” he replied. “I refused to.”
The source – who agreed to speak candidly about his recollections on the condition of anonymity - told me Botstein had a reputation for yelling and being rude to drivers. On one occasion, he picked up a close friend of Botstein’s. The friend said he’d just been with Botstein, who was “having a tantrum.” Botstein, according to the friend, was feeling indignant that someone at Bard wasn’t doing what he said.
Bard and Botstein did not reply to a request for comment about the source’s recollection. But Botstein’s alleged appetite for control was on the driver’s mind because of a transportation schedule he’d seen for July 1st – the day after Botstein’s presidency was scheduled to end. The schedule called for a driver to pick up Botstein’s wife at the president’s residence on Bard’s campus.
“I said, ‘wait a minute,’” the source told me. “They’re supposed to be out of there.” When he asked someone in the transportation department about it, they replied, “He’s not moving yet.”
Botstein was president of Bard for 51 years. During his tenure, he built a reputation as a prolific fundraiser, growing Bard’s endowment to over a billion dollars. When I asked James Romm, a professor in the college’s classics department, to assess Botstein’s legacy, he said, “This has been like the reign of Augustus, who was said to have come to Rome when it was a city of brick, and left it a city of marble.”
Romm has been at Bard for over three decades, and has watched enrollment increase dramatically during that period. He’s marveled at the school’s steady expansion and beautification of the campus facilities – all the while, he says, maintaining a standard of excellence from students and faculty.
“Again, as a historian, I reach for historical parallels,” said Romm. “And the one that comes to mind is Lorenzo de' Medici, who transformed Florence into the treasury of art and literature that made it the center of Renaissance humanism. President Botstein was always willing to spend, to go for the best in any field. To say, you know, ‘Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead.’”
Botstein’s triumphs as a fundraiser are indisputable. But over the last six months, storm clouds have formed over his reputation.
The release of the Epstein files revealed his long-running relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. The pair communicated extensively beginning in 2011, well after Epstein was a convicted sex offender. Botstein has repeatedly insisted that the relationship was purely motivated by his desire to tap into Epstein’s wealth on behalf of Bard. He says he neither knew about or witnessed Epstein’s abuse of girls, even though Epstein visited the Bard campus with young women, and welcomed Botstein as a guest at his Manhattan townhouse and private island. “I would take money from Satan if it permitted me to do God’s work,” Botstein told investigators at the law firm WilmerHale, who were probing the relationship earlier this year.
“If you’re taking money from Satan,” said the driver I spoke to, “you’re not doing God’s work.”
The investigators later published a brief report saying Botstein had made errors in judgement, but hadn’t done anything illegal. In June, Congressman Jamie Raskin, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, sent Bard a letter calling WilmerHale’s investigation insufficient, and alleging Botstein had been an accomplice to Epstein in his trafficking of girls. Raskin has called on Bard to submit all of WilmerHale’s investigative materials to the Judiciary Committee, and wants Botstein to sit for a transcribed interview.
After the WilmerHale report was released, Botstein announced his intention to step down from the presidency on June 30th. But he also said he planned to remain an active part of the Bard community, living on campus and continuing his relationship with the school’s renowned music programming at the Fisher Center. As the college begins its new era under Acting President Jonathan Becker, Botstein’s continued presence – and the lack of clarity about his role - has become a flashpoint of controversy.
Earlier this week, a group of Fisher Center employees, college faculty, students, and other community members sent a letter to Bard’s presidential transition committee and the Board of Trustees. “We respectfully and strongly request that the Board not further engage Leon Botstein in any contract related to music and performing arts activity at Bard College,” they wrote.
As of this writing, nearly 200 people have signed the letter. On Wednesday morning, the day after Botstein stepped down, I spoke with one of them – a current Fisher Center employee, who also requested anonymity, fearing that speaking out might jeopardize his job. “The impact of [Botstein’s] presence on campus is felt very significantly among Fisher Center staff,” he told me. "It's been several months of questions and anxiety that have been building up towards this particular moment.”
Now, he said, he and his co-workers are worried Botstein’s continued association with the center will jeopardize its future. “I think we are at risk of losing staff,” he continued. “I know that there are several who have stated in internal meetings that they do not want to support him or work on events where he is involved. Which becomes very complicated, as you can imagine. Our job is to make events happen. But if we don't want to literally give him a platform, then that's a direct conflict with our job titles.”
He says the Fisher Center is already getting complaints from potential audience members who want to know if Botstein will be involved in upcoming performances before they purchase tickets. He worries the situation will soon begin to jeopardize the center’s relationship with donors.
Karen Painter is a professor in the University of Minnesota’s music program. She got to know Botstein back in the 1990s, when she was teaching at Harvard. She invited Botstein to give a lecture, and they struck up a friendship based on their shared classical music scholarship. Painter came to view Botstein as something of a mentor. But over the years, his behavior started to give her pause.
“He has a temper - a very big temper. I witnessed it, and it was a little scary to me,” she recalled. Though the incident Painter recalls wasn’t directed at her, she found it unusual. “Academics can be terrible,” she acknowledged. But usually, in her experience, they’re passive-aggressive. “It is very, very unusual to see raising your voice and yelling.”
Botstein’s temper wasn’t the only thing that began to concern Painter. She found it odd that Botstein became the conductor of the American Symphony Orchestra, despite not having prior experience conducting the ensemble. The ASO later became the resident orchestra at the Fisher Center. Painter felt it didn’t serve the college’s presumed goal of giving students the best possible musical experience.
Now, with Botstein declaring his intention to stay involved in the school’s music programming, Painter has similar feelings. “I've heard from students that he insisted on conducting a concert this year, their last concert, conducting the Bard Orchestra. And the students had a petition - they didn't want him to. And that breaks my heart, you know?”
Painter compared the situation to former Harvard president and professor Larry Summers, whose legacy has also been tarnished by his associations with Epstein. Shortly after the release of the Epstein files revealed the scope of their relationship, Summers went on leave from Harvard, and later resigned.
"I really took note that after the Epstein revelations about Summers, the students protested, and Harvard honored their wish,” Painter said. “They conducted an investigation, and he never returned to the classroom. And I wonder, why didn't Bard students have that right? Why weren't they listened to and respected?”
The Fisher Center employee who signed the letter to the Board of Trustees says the exact nature of Botstein’s current involvement with the Center hasn’t been communicated. He finds the murkiness frustrating. “Why have him step down, clearly for the reasons of his associations with Epstein in one role, but not in others? We've been asking questions constantly to our leadership, who have passed it up the chain to the board of trustees. But up until this point there's still no clarity. Even today, on the first day where he is no longer president of the college, but is still presumably continuing to have all the all of these leadership roles, there’s no clarity from the college about what those responsibilities look like. Does he have a contract with the college? We do not know that. What standards can we hold him to in, in these roles? Who does he report to? How do we interact with him on a day-to-day basis? There's just so much questioning.”
James Romm, the classics professor who compared Botstein to Lorenzo de' Medici, doesn’t see a problem with Botstein remaining on campus. “It's unusual for a former president to return to a role as a faculty member, and no one knows quite what that's going to look like,” he said. “But I think it's a testimony to Botstein's attachment to the school, and his investment in it. I hope that he continues to teach in the first-year seminar program, which he has always done as president. It's a mark of his willingness to participate in general education. It would be quite refreshing if he were to continue in that role.”
Wyatt Mason, a writer-in-residence at Bard, has been teaching at the college for 17 years. He told me that Botstein has imbued Bard with a “freedom of inquiry.”
“I think the breadth and depth of what students can pursue here is unusual,” he said. The college, according to Mason, doesn’t just prioritize rigorous scholarship. “There's also a primacy of the arts as a fundamental part of human culture.”
Mason is an accomplished journalist – a contributing writer for the New York Times magazine and Harper’s, among other prestigious publications. He works closely with journalism students at Bard, and says the school has given him the freedom to hold them to high standards. “What I've been able to do in my teaching is to be able to understand that it's valid for me to bring the perspective of a journalist, working at the level of, ‘What does this sentence do, and what can you manage to put into 100 words?’ And have it be substantive, without my having to go and ask the administration, ‘Is it OK if I bring a journalistic practice to writing?’ Which is to say, build a sense of rigor through practice.”
Mason is critical of the way the story of Bard College has been told since the Epstein revelations. “I understand that there's a larger context that has kind of barnacled itself to the ship of Bard over the last six months, and I feel it is an incomplete picture of both what Bard is and what President Botstein has been through time, and continues to be.”
Without trivializing the Epstein part of the story, Mason says it’s important to tell it in the broader context of Botstein’s five decades of academic leadership.
“If one were to spend any time listening to proper addresses, or reading things that he has written, there's a consistent kind of rigor and passion for education that comes through in the very language that he uses,” Mason said. “I've not met anybody in my adult life - and I have had the good fortune of talking to people around the world who are, in their fields, remarkable writers, artists who are highly articulate, who are deeply committed to their work. I don't know anyone who has the rhetorical capacity married to the ethical standards exhibited in his being in the world than Leon Botstein.”
Karen Painter, Botstein’s former mentee, echoed some of those sentiments. She has great reverence for what Botstein has built at Bard. “It's not just a little college. It's a place that has very deeply affected the lives of so many people, mostly in good ways.”
But, she added: “Some have suffered, and it's an important time to move forward and continue the legacy of, you know, establishing very strong ethical leadership, because that's more important than fundraising. I think it's possible to admire the enormous contribution someone has made, at the same time as to say, ‘we are moving on.’”
In an email to Bard students and staff on his first day as Acting President, Jonathan Becker did not mention Botstein or Epstein. “It has been a difficult year for our community,” he wrote. “Yet I remain full of optimism.”
Harper Zacharias, a member of Bard’s 2019 graduating class, worked closely with Becker. Zacharias believes there is reason for optimism. “Jonathan is particularly skilled at meeting students where they're at, and regularly giving them opportunities to grow. He works with them side by side, which is something that I think is really special. He's a visionary with an unwavering belief in the power of liberal arts and sciences to better the world. And he's the kind of person who grapples with the hard questions, instead of walking away from them.”
But, according to the source who’s worked in the transportation department, that perception of Becker isn’t universal. “I know other drivers who said he was constantly on the phone with Leon, talking business. And the fear amongst amongst everybody is that Jonathan Becker will be in Leon's pocket.”
Bard did not respond to requests for comment from Botstein and the college about the nature of Botstein’s current relationship with the school, where he’s currently residing, their reaction to the letter from Fisher Center employees, or sources’ statements about Botstein’s temper.
Botstein’s continued presence on campus underscores the uncertainty about what his influence will be going forward. Several sources told me that Bard seems to be preparing for him to remain in the community indefinitely. Botstein is planning to take up residence at the college’s Finberg House, where these sources said construction is underway on a new office for him.
I called Bard’s Buildings and Grounds team to ask about this, but didn’t hear back. I also drove by Finberg House to see if I could see any obvious signs of construction – which I couldn’t. But before I left campus, I stopped into Buildings and Grounds. A person at the desk declined to speak with me. But I told the person what I’d heard about the Finberg project, and said “I’m just trying to confirm whether this construction is taking place.”
The person behind the desk nodded vigorously.
