Leon Botstein, who led Bard College for 50 years, resigned on October 7 from all remaining Bard-affiliated positions, including his professorship and roles with The Orchestra Now and other music programs. The move came after House Judiciary Committee Democrats surfaced an email of his in the Justice Department's Epstein files and called for a federal investigation into his conduct.
Ranking Member Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, wrote to Bard's acting president and board chairman on October 7 with new details. According to Raskin, DOJ Epstein files show that in May 2014, Jeffrey Epstein sent a young aspiring vocalist he had been trafficking — identified as Jane Doe — to meet Botstein, "ostensibly for him to assess her musical talents and provide her with educational guidance." In a May 15, 2014, email to Epstein, Botstein asked: "Is [Jane Doe] for me, or are you keeping her for yourself?"
The Justice Department redacted Botstein's official presidential email address in the publicly released file, but members of Congress were allowed to view the unredacted version at the DOJ, according to Raskin's office.
Raskin wrote that the new information suggests Botstein "likely enabled and possibly even participated in Epstein's abuse." He also said the committee had received "deeply troubling" whistleblower reports that Botstein sexually harassed women while president and used his influence to meddle in campus Title IX proceedings to "protect sexual predators on the Bard faculty." Raskin and Rep. Madeleine Dean have urged the DOJ and FBI to open a criminal investigation.
Botstein denied the allegations: "Any assertion that I knew of or was involved in Epstein's criminal behavior is wrong." He said he resigned to "protect Bard from any distraction" and did not want "even false allegations about me" to put at risk the institution he had served for more than half a century.
Bard board chairman Brandon Weber said Wednesday evening that the board's executive committee had voted unanimously to accept Botstein's resignation, that the college would undertake "a full review" of the allegations in Raskin's letter, and that it was cooperating with the committee's investigation.
This was not Botstein's first reckoning over Epstein. In May, after an independent review by the law firm WilmerHale found no illegal conduct but "substantial lapses in leadership and candor," he announced he would step down as president at the end of the 2025–26 academic year. In June, 28 Fisher Center staff members and dozens of former members signed a letter demanding the board end his remaining leadership roles; in August he began a yearlong sabbatical.
Now, with a federal investigation on the table, the 79-year-old conductor-educator's half-century Bard career has come to a definitive end.