Berani dalam Benar: Hard lessons from Jeffrey Epstein!

Of late, it was reported that more than USD37 million was spent by major US research universities on federal lobbying efforts in 2025. This is said to be up significantly from 2024, when those same institutions spent USD28.1 million. Under such an environment where fundings are hard to come by, new doors opened to various avenues away from conventional federal grants, but more towards private donations from “wealthy benefactors,” subjected to a number of unprecedented “terms and conditions.” At times, subtly imposed beyond ethics and principles to secure employment, score academic accolades, and the likes.

The trend seems to coincide well with the latest set of documents released by the US Justice Department implicating the Jeffrey Epstein’s files in extending into the academia “deeper than previously known,” involving “dozens of researchers who exchanged chummy emails while leaning on him to fund their projects.” They allegedly range from Nobel laureates, “pioneers of science and medicine,” to at least one university president, and other acclaimed personalities as well as high-profile academics. When faced with the backlash, many cited “Epstein’s wealth” as a single factor interlinking them, even after his infamous “sexual” conviction became common knowledge. To some others, the response sounded familiar, namely, Epstein had money to give, and they needed it.

Thus, not surprisingly, numerous academic identities appeared among the files, “revealing conversations that covered topics from scientific studies to sex and romance,” with one scholar said to have resigned over the new revelations, while others under review of their conduct. One even regarded this as SOP (“standard operating procedure”) in dealing with potential donors. A willing donor with a personal vested interest to pursue! “It’s human nature that philanthropists expect at least a modicum of congeniality from fundraisers and beneficiaries of their largess,” recorded an email.

According to Geoffrey Williams in one of his educational commentaries, this has resulted in a landscape of crisis. Locally, it is “eroded by poor rankings celebrated on social media by vice-chancellors hobnobbing in expensive international commercial marketing conferences while their students and staff struggle to make ends meet.” Financially, the crisis is more telling where 55% of private universities were loss-making while 64% in some form of stress (in 2018), and it is likely to be worse now, he added. Similarly, in developed countries, the financial crisis is deepening with 33% of US universities, 40% of UK, while 66% of Australia. Generally, research is underfunded and tends to be located outside of universities.

In Malaysia, some four years earlier, the issue of “sugar daddy universities” emerged causing an uproar nationally. In hindsight the issue closely resonates with the prevailing controversy discussed above. More so, when investigations allegedly “revealed that it saw a 40% increase in students registering to be ‘sugar babies’ since January,” although some described it as “blown out of proportion” with 12,705 students from 10 institutions of higher learning named using the platform. The pandemic and movement control order have been cited as the cause why more Malaysian university students resorted to the platform to cover their cost of living and tuition fees, a clear indication as to the financial difficulties they are facing. While the relevant authority then took serious views about the revelations made on the “student programme” website, Facebook reported a sharp increase in the number of university students involved. Fast forward, this issue seems to be very much alive and still not fully understood or resolved given the information provided by the “official” website on the matter updated as recently as last year. Listed as top careers of sugar daddies include entrepreneurs, engineers, lawyers, doctors and investors – though nowhere near the “stature” of Jeffrey Epstein. Still, there is room for concern given the overall “explosive” experience from the latter as exposed recently, despite his previous public convictions. 

Meaning to say episodes of this nature can be kept away from the public eyes when wealthy and powerful persons are implicated in one way or another. In our case, the various tragic on-going bullying episodes should have alerted us of ultimate consequences, should there be no serious efforts to safeguard the community in their pursuit to quality education against the unscrupulous and the greedy. The risks as admitted by the organiser are indeed real with increasing numbers of foreign students – “there are always a few challenges that people face at some point when in Malaysia where attitudes to traditional values are preserved” – at an offer of RM2,500 monthly on average! What is more in the current “hobnobbing” days of ranking as rightly described by Geoffrey Williams; unless the leadership at all education sectors remains firmly determined to dearly preserve the moral-ethical values against those acculturated in the pages of the Jeffrey Epstein files that eventually cost him his dignity and  life while in custody!  Something that no money can buy! In other words, education is doomed to fail the Epstein way.

It always seems impossible until it is done          Nelson Mandela (1918-2013)