MIT professor quits in protest over lab links to Epstein

The head of a research center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has said he will quit in protest after the revelation of financial ties between the institution and disgraced hedge fund manager Jeffrey Epstein.

Ethan Zuckerman, director of the Center for Civic Media at the MIT Media Lab, said he would leave at the end of the 2019-2020 academic year after finding out that lab director Joi Ito took money from Epstein, who committed suicide in prison on August 10 as he awaited trial on sex trafficking charges.

"My logic was simple: the work my group does focuses on social justice and on the inclusion of marginalized individuals and points of view," Zuckerman wrote in a message posted on the Medium forum Tuesday and added to Wednesday.

"It's hard to do that work with a straight face in a place that violated its own values so clearly in working with Epstein and in disguising that relationship."
While taking "full responsibility for my error in judgment," Ito said "that in all of my interactions with Epstein, I was never involved in, never heard him talk about, and never saw any evidence of the horrific acts that he was accused of."