JES BEING FRIENDLY

Bowdoin College Prez Backpedals on Praise for Epstein Pal and Trustee

Clayton Rose remarked in 2019 that James “Jes” Staley, a Bowdoin trustee who’d helped hire him, represented “all that is great” about the school.

Bowdoin College President Clayton Rose said last week that he was “clearly wrong” to sing the praises of trustee James “Jes” Staley after the depth of Staley’s “deeply disturbing” relationship with Jeffrey Epstein emerged in a new lawsuit. In newly unredacted portions of a complaint against JPMorgan Chase & Co., it was alleged that Staley, a former top executive at the bank, swapped more than 1,000 emails with Epstein, some of which contained sexually suggestive content and photos of young women. In a letter to the Bowdoin community last Wednesday, Rose apologized for calling Staley someone who “represents all that is great about Bowdoin” in a 2019 interview. Staley, a Bowdoin alum, was named to the college’s board of trustees in 2007, and led the search that eventually ended in Rose’s hiring as president. He is not named as a defendant in the ongoing case against JPMorgan, and the bank’s attorneys have denied that Staley was aware of Epstein’s work as a sex trafficker.