For a week shortened by the Labor Day holiday heralding the coming end of summer, the past few days yielded their fair share of Boston-area technology business news. Read on for a roundup of the news.
—MIT Media Lab co-founder Nicholas Negroponte reportedly argued it was right to take money from disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein over the years. Negroponte also said he would do it all again if he had the chance, according to the MIT Technology Review’s account of an internal meetingcalled to address the university’s connections to Epstein.
“If you wind back the clock,” he added, “I would still say, ‘Take it.’”
Two weeks ago, MIT President L. Rafael Reif released the university’s accounting of its relationship with Epstein: Over two decades, it accepted $800,000 in donations from foundations controlled by Epstein. All the funds went to the Media Lab or to physicist Seth Lloyd, an MIT faculty member. Reif said accepting the funds was a “mistake of judgment.”
Two researchers have left the Media Lab as a result of revelations that the center’s director Joi Ito had deep financial connections to Epstein.
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