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ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y. — Leon Botstein, the longtime president of Bard College and one of higher education's most recognizable public intellectuals, has announced his retirement after a damning independent report detailed years of previously undisclosed contact with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, including 25 visits to Epstein's Manhattan townhouse and a multi-day stay on his private Caribbean island.

Botstein, 79, who has led the small liberal arts college on the Hudson River for more than four decades, told the Bard community in an email Friday that he will step down at the end of June. The announcement came one day after the law firm WilmerHale delivered the results of its months-long investigation to the college's Board of Trustees — an investigation triggered by the public release of the so-called Epstein files earlier this year.

A Report That Changed Everything

According to multiple individuals briefed on the WilmerHale findings, the report concludes that Botstein's relationship with Epstein between 2012 and 2019 was significantly deeper, longer, and more transactional than the Bard president had previously acknowledged in public statements and in his communications with the college's faculty and trustees.

The investigation documented at least 25 visits Botstein made to Epstein's New York townhouse during that seven-year window, along with a two-day stay at Epstein's notorious Little Saint James island in the U.S. Virgin Islands. The findings further detailed that Epstein steered $150,000 from his foundation to Botstein personally, a sum the Bard president has said he immediately donated to the college.

Investigators also concluded that Epstein "repeatedly dangled the promise of a multi-million-dollar contribution" to Bard, which never materialized. The pursuit of that potential gift, the report suggests, may have helped sustain Botstein's continued contact with the disgraced financier even after Epstein's 2008 conviction in Florida and during the years he was registered as a sex offender.

While the report stops short of finding any illegal conduct on Botstein's part, it states bluntly that the longtime president "minimized and was not fully accurate" in his public characterization of his relationship with Epstein.

A Storied Career Ends Under a Cloud

Botstein's tenure at Bard, which began in 1975, is by some measures the longest of any sitting college president in the United States. During his decades at the helm, the school grew from a small liberal arts institution into a globally recognized network with affiliated colleges in Berlin, St. Petersburg, and Jerusalem, and partnerships with public schools across New York City. Botstein himself became a familiar figure beyond academia as the music director of the American Symphony Orchestra and a frequent commentator on culture and education policy.

That public profile is now overshadowed by the conclusions of the WilmerHale review. In his retirement announcement Friday, Botstein expressed regret but stopped short of admitting any wrongdoing. "I am proud of what we have built at Bard, and I take responsibility for the decisions I made," he wrote. "Some of those decisions, in retrospect, I would not make again."

The Bard Board of Trustees, in a separate statement, thanked Botstein for "five decades of transformative leadership" but acknowledged that the report's findings had "made clear the time has come for new leadership." The board said an interim president will be named in the coming days, with a national search for a permanent successor to begin shortly thereafter.

Pressure From Faculty, Students — and Donors

Pressure for Botstein's exit had been mounting for weeks. After portions of the Epstein client logs and travel records became public earlier this year, several faculty members called for an outside review. Student groups organized protests on the Annandale campus demanding accountability, and at least three significant donors signaled in private conversations with the board that future giving would depend on the school's response.

The release of the WilmerHale report — even before its findings were made public in detail — appears to have crystallized those concerns into a consensus that change was unavoidable.

"This is not just about one man's mistakes," said one Bard faculty member, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "It is about whether the institution is willing to hold itself to the same standards it asks of its students. The board, finally, said yes."

Part of a Broader Reckoning

Botstein's exit is the latest in a string of high-profile departures from American institutions in the wake of the Epstein file disclosures. Several university trustees, museum directors, and corporate executives have stepped down in recent months as their previously private contacts with the disgraced financier have come to light.

Higher-education observers said the Bard case is particularly significant because of the depth of documentation produced by the WilmerHale review and because of the size and reputation of the institution involved. "This is no longer a story about peripheral connections," said Anne Trumbore, a higher-education consultant who has tracked the post-disclosure fallout. "It is about decisions made over years, by leaders who knew exactly who Epstein was."

What's Next for Bard

The college now faces the dual challenge of navigating a leadership transition while reckoning with the reputational damage of the report's findings. Faculty leaders said they are pressing the board to make the full WilmerHale report public, or at least to publish a detailed summary, in the interest of transparency.

"You can't ask the next president to clean this up if you do not first show the community what actually happened," one trustee said in an interview Saturday.

For Botstein, who once seemed certain to remain in his role until well into his 80s, the closing chapter has come abruptly. He will retire to a faculty appointment, the college said, and will retain a continuing role with the American Symphony Orchestra.

But the institution he built — and the one he is now leaving behind — will spend years grappling with the questions his decisions have left in their wake. As one alumnus put it Saturday, summing up the mood on campus: "We always thought we knew who he was. Now we are not so sure we ever did."