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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.