Come for the deep Moira lore, stay for the analysis of men’s gender solidarity…

I’m never going to talk about my lawsuit ever again, so if you want the gossip, here’s your chance: @adriandaub.bsky.social and I talked about the Epstein files as a document of Me Too backlash on @inbedwiththeright.bsky.social podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/i...

<jazz hands> The Academics!

Every second he is still in the presidency is an abomination. Come on @bardcollege.bsky.social

Children being starved in concentration camps.

Yeah, it’s important to have this image in your mind as you read his emails to Jeffrey Epstein.

“But without Leon Botstein, Bard won’t exist anymore.” Oh no, then where would the protagonist teach in a Brooklyn millennial’s realist divorce novel?

nah bro

like it sure reads like he is trying to help JE manipulate this violinist www.justice.gov/epstein/file...

I’m sure there’s a perfectly innocent explanation for the leader of a child sex ring wanting to make sure a girl is appropriately dressed for the college president.

Jesus Christ

Rep. Nellie Pou (D-N.J.) with one of the grimmest questions of this hearing, to ICE chief Lyons: "Will you provide us with a list of people ICE has transferred from New Jersey to other states, so I can inform their families where they are?" Lyons says yes.

Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-NJ) asks Lyons if he thinks he's going to hell! First real stir in the room in quite a while

Leon Botstein absolutely has to leave Bard College

Rapists should be punished.

It’s not a normal college, and Botstein’s personalist rule has both degraded the quality of the education on offer and also enabled some pretty wild ethics violations. I tell people to think of it less as a school and more as a cult with a charismatic guru.

Botstein invited a known pedophile to a high school he oversaw. How can he possibly survive this?

President Leon Botstein of @bardcollege.bsky.social to the New York Times in 2026: Jeffrey Epstein “wasn’t a friend.” President Leon Botstein of @bardcollege.bsky.social to Jeffrey Epstein in 2013: “I greatly cherish this new friendship.”

Among other things, how does Leon “Epstein Island” Botstein think he’s going to raise money anymore? His whole schtick was a pious, faux-profound plea to our better angels, and now that argument has been laughably undermined by his own behavior.

Hard not to read this and feel that what @bardcollege.bsky.social president Leon Botstein found morally urgent and emotionally effecting in the Epstein story was not the women and girls who were abused, but the rich man who was embarrassed.

Bard “Jeffrey Epstein’s favorite” College @bardcollege.bsky.social

Leon Botstein, president of @bardcollege.bsky.social, was connected to a young woman, apparently a student, through Jeffrey Epstein. He must resign. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/09/u...

The shocking arrogance, bad judgement, and bad values of Leon Botstein have been on regular display throughout the Epstein saga, but this particular omission in his public statements—backed, suspects, by his certainty that this email would not come to light—reveals something else: his stupidity.

Here is how @bardcollege.bsky.social President Leon Botstein addressed Jeffrey Epstein the just after the Miami Herald published an article detailing his sexual abuse of children: www.nytimes.com/2026/02/09/u...

Leon Botstein, president of @bardcollege.bsky.social, first told reporters that he could not remember if he had ever visited the Caribbean island of his friend, the pedophile sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. New emails show Botstein thanking Epstein for the visit. “I had a great time,” Botstein said.

With more Leon Botstein/Bard connections in the Epstein files, I’m thinking about Sarah Gerard’s Carrie Carolyn Coco, which I reviewed for WaPo in 2014. Gerard contextualizes the killing of her friend Carolyn Bush within the larger culture of misogyny at Bard. (gift link: wapo.st/4arzzww)

Leon Botstein, Bard’s president, also invited Jeffrey Epstein to visit a high school linked to Bard College and sent him well wishes after stories were published about his sexual abuse of minors www.nytimes.com/2026/02/09/u...

Me: Is America the world's most misogynist country? France: tiens ma bière

This is gender.

Reading a lot lately about the early women's rights activists who emerged out of the abolition movement in the 1840s and 1850s, and these women seem so modern and familiar in so many ways that it's really galling to then learn how dramatically constrained their legal rights were.

"The sheer number of Epstein’s connections to the rulers of our world is dizzying. So, too, reading the emails, is the willingness of his circle to continue their relationships with him despite his convictions for sex crimes..." By @moiradonegan.bsky.social

For my part, I think that being friendly with a convicted pedophile shows the kind of bad judgement that should disqualify people from any large leadership position. But to many people occupying those leadership positions, Epstein's pedophilia conviction seems to have felt like an asset.

I wrote about the powerful men who sought out Jeffrey Epstein for dating advice and went to him to help navigate their own sexual misconduct scandals after his 2008 conviction on child sex abuse charges. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

"The sheer number of Epstein’s connections to the rulers of our world is dizzying," writes @moiradonegan.bsky.social. "So, too...is the willingness of his circle to continue their relationships with him despite his convictions for sex crimes..."

Next Superbowl halftime should include a recreation of the confederate surrender at Appomattox while Jefferson Davis flees the scene dressed as an old lady.

Reflecting on this, I think everyone should have the experience of getting documented proof that yes, in fact your enemies are conspiring against you.

Epstein was not ostracised for his crimes. To some powerful men, he became even more appealing | Moira Donegan

Anyway, I'll be getting a copy of Botstein's published book rationalizing how teenagers should be adults now this week

it also, to my view, seems very clear that it was Epstein and not Botstein who facilitated Leon Black's donations to Bard and the relationship between the two of them. They didn't seem to know each other when the Island trip was arranged. www.justice.gov/epstein/file...

but i'm not even sure the "no other donations materialized" is true. There are multiple emails that strongly indicate another $250,000 was sent in December 2014. www.justice.gov/epstein/file...

I disagree with Congressman Gonzales that 5-year-old American citizen children are helped in any way by their kindergarten classmates being kisbnapped and disappeared by marked, armed thugs.

Will Lewis is resigning as WaPo CEO, former Tumblr CEO Jeff D’Onofrio is the paper’s new acting CEO and publisher, per memos to staff

Among other things, how does Leon “Epstein Island” Botstein think he’s going to raise money anymore? His whole schtick was a pious, faux-profound plea to our better angels, and now that argument has been laughably undermined by his own behavior.

Bard College must remove Botstein immediately!

New documents show that @bardcollege.bsky.social president Leon Botstein purchased a $51,615 rare watch; Botstein says he bought the watch on behalf of Jeffrey Epstein. But when Epstein’s accountant demanded that Botstein pay for the watch, Botstein did so. I guess out of the goodness of his heart.

One question I have is that if Bard President Leon Botstein, Jeffrey Epstein’s friend, thinks that college rapist boys are similar to Nazis, then why does his school treat them so leniently? www.huffpost.com/entry/bard-c...

Hard to overstate the extent to which Leon Botstein’s personal scorn for feminist anti-rape politics permeated Bard College’s culture while I was there. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/06/u...

What’s great about JD Vance is that unlike Miller, he doesn’t *want* to be hated. You can tell it eats at him that he is the object of universal scorn—that yet again he has given up everything in search of love, and found only contempt. This is what he deserves.

It occurs to me that Leon Botstein is good at cultivating exactly the kind of ego gratification that Epstein sought out: an appearance of worldly, old-money educatedness with none of the demands or rigor of actual substance.

Bard College President Leon Botstein appears in the Epstein files more than 2,500 times, including arranging travel to Epstein’s island, hosting a visit with “girls” to campus and telling the child sex predator, “I miss you.” Sarah Trafton reports: www.timesunion.com/hudsonvalley...