Martin Nowak, a professor of mathematics and of biology, has been placed on paid administrative leave for a second time, a Faculty of Arts and Sciences spokesperson confirmed this week, in response to new information pertaining to his dealings with convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
In a letter obtained by the Crimson and addressed to faculty colleagues, Edgerly Family Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) Hopi Hoekstra wrote that the latest investigation is based on “new information that has come to light as part of the review of documents released by the U.S. Department of Justice regarding Jeffrey Epstein.” Nowak’s name appears more than 8,000 times in those files.
Nowak was first placed on paid administrative leave in 2021 by Claudine Gay, then dean of the FAS. The FAS action at that time was reportedly based on the findings of a 2020 Harvard report detailing the University’s connections with Epstein.
The financier had given $6.5 million to launch Nowak’s Program for Evolutionary Dynamics (PED) in 2003—a portion of more than $9 million in total gifts from Epstein to the University, according to the report. Nowak’s scholarship at the PED has contributed to the understanding of the evolution of cooperation, the origins of life on Earth, and the operation of biological networks.
Epstein was convicted for soliciting child prostitution in Florida in 2008 and served 13 months in prison. After 2013, with Nowak’s approval, Epstein continued to visit the PED offices at Harvard—more than 40 times between 2010 and 2018. During that time, he cultivated friendships and attended dinners with Harvard and MIT professors and others. Nowak reportedly provided Epstein with his own office, gave him an access card to the Program’s headquarters at One Brattle Square, and created a flattering page about him on the PED website.
Epstein was arrested for child sex trafficking in 2019. Harvard shut down the PED in 2021.
The FAS has not disclosed the reasons for Nowak’s second administrative leave, and Nowak is not accused of committing any crimes. Publicly available documents released by the Department of Justice (DOJ) show a series of interactions between Epstein and Nowak that range from Epstein’s involvement in research at the PED to financial transactions that appear to have involved students.
Earlier this month, the journal Nature reported that in 2009, Epstein funneled scholarship funds through one of Nowak’s Ph.D. students to two young female mathematicians in Romania. He had previously helped the student obtain a visa.
Further, according to the Nature report, when Nowak shared page proofs of a paper accepted to Nature before publication, “Epstein gave advice for dealing with criticism of the paper.” He also suggested that Nowak and his student pursue avenues of research that interested him.
The Nature report quoted mathematician Jesse Kass, Ph.D. ’09, now an associate professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who said, “It’s unheard of for somebody who’s providing funding to be engaged with the actual research on that level.” Kass told Nature that “there should be some serious discussion [in academic circles] over what went wrong and how to make that not happen again” in partnerships with private funders.
The recently released DOJ files also reveal that Epstein’s personal assistant made travel arrangements for Nowak and a female graduate student—then pursuing a Ph.D. in another department at Harvard—to fly to the Caribbean in 2014, as part of a weekend visit to Epstein’s private island. In an email, the assistant wrote that she had purchased tickets for both Nowak and the student.
‘Mixed signals’ on fundraising
The University’s 2020 report into Epstein’s relationship with Harvard— prepared under the supervision of Harvard’s then-general counsel Diane Lopez—found that Harvard did not have clear policies governing gifts from controversial donors such as Epstein, nor an effective means of communicating decisions about donations.
The report noted that in 2008—after Epstein’s child sex offender conviction—then-President Drew Faust determined that the University should not accept a new gift from the financier, after being briefed about him by advisers. However, the report noted, “No formal record was made of President Faust’s decision…and we have seen no documents indicating that Harvard formally informed either Epstein or the faculty members whose work Epstein had supported of President Faust’s decision.”
Nowak tried to appeal Faust’s decision to get more money for the PED, the report said; in 2013, he and other mathematics department professors pressured then-FAS dean Michael Smith to permit new gifts from Epstein. Smith independently reached the same conclusion that Faust had—not to accept new gifts from Epstein. But “even after President Faust and Dean Smith concluded that Harvard should not accept gifts from Epstein,” the report found, “the development office sent mixed signals on the subject.”
“While inviting Epstein to campus did not violate any Harvard policies,” the 2020 report continued, “aspects of his relationship to the PED, such as his access to the program’s offices, treatment on the PED’s website and interactions concerning one grant application, do implicate Harvard policies.”
In 2020, after releasing the report, Harvard donated unspent funds given by Epstein totaling more than $200,000 to organizations that support victims of human trafficking and sexual assault.
The following year, the FAS also imposed sanctions on Nowak that prevented him from serving as a principal investigator on any new grants or contracts and barred him from supervising new postdoctoral fellows and other researchers, as well as graduate students and undergraduates, for a period of two years. Those sanctions were lifted by the FAS in 2023.
During the current investigation into Nowak’s conduct, Hoekstra wrote to colleagues this week, arrangements are being made to cover his teaching and advising responsibilities.
The recent DOJ release, which includes 3.5 million pages of documents, revealed that Nowak is one of dozens of academics with whom Epstein had contact in the years after his 2008 conviction, prompting resignations and other repercussions at universities across the country—including at Harvard. Earlier this week, Eliot University Professor Lawrence H. Summers, who served as Harvard president from 2001 to 2006, announced that he would retire at the end of the academic year. Records revealed that Summers had maintained a personal relationship with Epstein as late as 2019, corresponding on a range of subjects.
