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| Robert Trivers |
I first met Jeffrey Epstein in 2004 when he threw a party in my honor at the Institute for Theoretical Biology, which he had set up at Harvard to the tune of a $6,000,000 grant. I was on sabbatical and Martin Nowak who ran the Institute granted me space.
Second time I met Jeffrey was at his home in NYC. He invited me to a party in honor of a very creative physicist at Princeton’s Institute of Advanced Studies, Freeman Dyson. A most agreeable party, mostly men but a very agreeable woman also, perhaps ten years younger, attractive, warm and friendly. Her name was Ghislane Maxwell. At some point we exchanged phone numbers but I do not remember any follow-up.
I first heard about Jeffrey’s legal problems when he called to apologize for having forced Martin Nowak to cancel my talk—along with a party—at the Institute for Theoretical Biology in May of 2007. I had just won the Crafoord Prize, the “Nobel Prize” for Ecology & Evolution awarded by the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences and Martin had invited me to a give my same Swedish talk, followed by a party in my honor to which I could invite 20 of my own guests, my daughter and her husband, Noam Chomsky and his wife, and so on.
It was cancelled because I had gotten into a public argument with Alan Dershowitz over the Arab–Israeli conflict. Dershowitz pressured Epstein who pressured Nowak who promptly cancelled both talk and party. I learned with less than 5 hours to warn friends. Extremely painful.
So Epstein’s apology was welcome (Nowak never apologized) but then he went on to ask my advice for surviving 14 months in jail, which he was expecting to enter in 3 months time.
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Praised by other highly regarded academics for his work in evolutionary biology, Prof. Trivers' blog comments reveal a person shockingly lacking in historical knowledge or economic understanding. In a posting criticizing Obama for not implementing an even larger government spending program to cure the recession he writes: "Since 1932 it was well known that the appropriate response was massive government spending directed at the newly unemployed and, if possible, at repairing infrastructure." How could he be so blind to history as it actually unfolded in the 1930's and 1940's? I include WWII in this economically depressed period. He doesn't have to be a "master" of history or economics to see the high level of unemployment and lack of economic growth that prevailed during this time despite (because of?) the relatively high level of government spending. Growth did not reappear until the late 1940's when government spending was cut dramatically. Not to mention the relative impoverishment of countries with relatively high levels of government spending in subsequent years. Its as if Prof. Trivers has been living in a cave totally unaware of the world around him except as reported by his fellow academics. A man so blind to events of the 20th century might not be able to offer any reliable observations of Mr. Epstein. And certainly does not engender any confidence in the so-called subject of "evolutionary biology."
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