Petition: Fire Brown fundraiser for MIT Epstein cover-up

More than 100 Brown University graduates and data scientists are calling on the school to fire a high-ranking fundraising official who in his previous job at MIT helped conceal donations from financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

An email petition sent to Brown President Christina Paxson on Thursday demands the university "terminates its working relationship with [Director of Development for Computer and Data Science Initiatives] Peter Cohen, effective immediately, and makes this decision public."

The petition was circulated among graduates of Brown's programs in applied mathematics, biostatistics, computer science and mathematics along with non-Brown graduates working in "related disciplines and industries." It was signed by 110 people as of Thursday afternoon.

Cohen was put on administrative leave pending a university investigation into his work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Brown announced Sunday, two days after The New Yorker and New York Times published stories detailing efforts to hide Epstein's close relationship to the MIT Media Lab. The New Yorker published emails from Cohen to colleagues saying that any donation from Epstein, who had been disqualified as a donor due to his 2008 guilty plea to having sex with a minor, "needs to be anonymous."

The director of the Media Lab, Joi Ito, resigned from MIT over the weekend.

The petition signers stand "in solidarity" with MIT employees who have questioned that school's leadership for taking money from Epstein, who died of apparent suicide in a New York jail cell Aug. 10 while awaiting trial on multiple charges of sex-trafficking of minors in New York and Florida.

Turning to Brown, the petition said, "we also question the judgement of Brown University leadership in hiring Peter Cohen, who over his career at MIT repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to work with Epstein as a mechanism to fund the work of the Media Lab," the petition says. "And, at a larger level, we must consider the structural implications that allowed Epstein’s connections to gain so much power at MIT. We do not believe that academic research institutions should be developed in service of the global economic elite.

Cohen, a 1990 Brown graduate, was hired in 2018. A March 2018 online posting for the position seeks candidates "with university development and/or high-tech business development backgrounds."

"This position is for someone who wants to drive a significant development effort in one of the most intriguing and active areas in academics today," the job posting said.

The petition was written by 2016 computer science graduates Alexa VanHattum and Sam Heft-Luthy.

In an email response to The Journal on Thursday, Brown spokesman Brian Clark said Brown does "not have a practice of responding through news media to matters expressed in online petitions. Instead, we value direct dialogue and engagement with students, alumni, faculty and staff on matters of interest to the Brown community."

He said Cohen remains on paid leave.

Separate reports Thursday indicated that MIT's relationship with Epstein, and Cohen's work, were known in the upper echelons of the elite university.  

The Boston Globe reported that MIT president L. Rafael Reif signed a letter thanking Epstein for a donation in 2012 and senior MIT officials were aware the Media Lab was receiving gifts from Epstein up to 2017.