PAPER TRAIL

Epstein’s ‘Inside Man’ at Harvard Put on Leave Over Links to Dead Pedophile

Prof. Martin Nowak’s name appears more than 4000 times in the Epstein files.

A Harvard professor has been put on leave after disturbing email messages he exchanged with Jeffrey Epstein were made public.

Martin Nowak, a professor of mathematics and biology at the esteemed university, is on paid administrative leave amid “new information” surrounding his ties to the late pedophile, the student newspaper Harvard Crimson reported.

Nowak, dubbed Epstein’s “inside man” at Harvard by The Boston Globe, is under formal investigation after the Department of Justice released a trove of emails he sent to the disgraced financier over several years.

This includes a disturbing exchange in 2014—years after Epstein was first exposed as a child sex offender—in which Nowak wrote: “our spy was captured after completing her mission.” Epstein replied: “did you torture her.”

In another email from 2010, Nowak told Epstein that “flying in your plane from New York to Boston was a life-transforming experience.” Elsewhere, the DOJ redacted a photo of a woman Nowak had sent to Epstein in 2014, whom he labeled “my Korean friend.”

In 2014, another email reads: “does JE want Martin Nowak to visit him on the island March 1?”

Nowak’s associations with Epstein have been known for years, but he has never been accused of any crimes linked to the late financier. Epstein was jailed for soliciting minors for prostitution in 2008 after securing a controversial sweetheart plea deal, and died while awaiting further federal child sex trafficking charges in August 2019.

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Harvard Prof. Put on Leave for Lavish Epstein Friendship

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Harvard sanctioned Nowak for his interactions with Epstein in 2021, but those sanctions were lifted in 2023. A 2020 internal report about Epstein’s connections to the university found he visited the offices of the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics (PED), led by Nowak, more than 40 times between 2010 and 2018.

Of the $9 million Epstein and his foundations donated to Harvard, his largest gift was a $6.5 million contribution to establish the PED in 2003. Epstein also used Nowak as a middleman to meet other professionals and academics connected to Harvard.

Nowak and Epstein met in person in Boston as late as May 2019, just two months before Epstein was arrested on fresh federal sex trafficking charges, The Crimson reported.

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Nowak is among a number of Harvard professors, donors, and benefactors who were in communication with Epstein before his death in 2019.

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On Wednesday, former Harvard President Larry Summers, who was in frequent contact with Epstein for years, announced he would resign from teaching as the Ivy League school carries out its review into the release of the Epstein files.

In a letter to faculty in the mathematics and organismic and evolutionary biology departments, Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Hopi E. Hoekstra thanked them for their support while acknowledging the “recent focus on your departments has been difficult.”

The Daily Beast has contacted Nowak for comment.

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