The Epstein files keep landing at elite universities, and the pattern is so consistent it’s raising the story to national security levels.

How many kids going to college are exploited into a human trafficking system of powerful men running these institutions?

At Yale, computer science professor David Gelernter appears 563 times in the files. For example, he emailed Epstein in 2011 recommending a student for a job. He described her as a “v small goodlooking blonde.” This was three years after Epstein’s conviction for soliciting prostitution from a minor. When caught, Gelernter told the dean he was just keeping “the potential boss’s habits in mind” since Epstein was “obsessed with girls” like “every other unmarried billionaire in Manhattan; in fact, like every other heterosex male.”

Yale has barred him from teaching pending review.

At Duke, the world’s most famous researcher on dishonesty, already credibly accused of falsifying data in a study about honesty — appears 636 times. Behavioral economics professor Dan Ariely met Epstein at least seven times between 2010 and 2016. In one email he asked Epstein for the name and contact of a “redhead” who “seemed very very smart,” signing it “Honestly* yours, Dan.”

Duke shuttered his Center for Advanced Hindsight one week after the files dropped and claimed the timing was coincidental.

At Harvard, former president Larry Summers, the former Treasury Secretary and recent OpenAI board member, asked Epstein for advice on pursuing a romantic relationship with a woman he called a mentee. Epstein called himself Summers’ “pretty good wing man.” Summers’ strategy, laid out in emails to a convicted sex trafficker: make the woman conclude “she can’t have it without romance / sex.” He corresponded with Epstein until the day before Epstein’s 2019 arrest.

Harvard “opened an investigation.”

This is just three universities.

This is just three professors.

So far.

The same mechanism shows up every time: powerful men in hierarchical institutions treat young girls in their care instead as their currency in transactions with a convicted sex offender. Institutional language is leaned on to minimize it when emails expose them.

• Gelernter says gentlemen don’t read each other’s mail.
• Ariely says the contact was “infrequent, largely logistical.”
• Summers says he’s “deeply ashamed” while Harvard investigates whether shame is sufficient.

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Why did these universities respond identically? Reviews. Statements. Passive constructions. Yale “does not condone the action taken by the professor.” Well, that’s about a minimal as you can get. Duke’s center closure was “finalized in December.” Good. Harvard? Come on Harvard.

None of them rise to the level of admitting a convicted sex offender had years-long access, via their faculty, to harm students. They’re investigating the embarrassment to protect their reputation, not the evidence of a human trafficking pipeline.

Epstein stands out less as the one man causing the corruption of these institutions and more as the kind of man they invited because he wasn’t supposed to be caught. He recognized what was there, with the help of foreign intelligence, and preyed on older men who held authority over vulnerable young girls (and boys?).

I’m reminded of American universities who were “endowed” by South African apartheid, or the Vietnam War. The funding model apparently tries to ignore where the money comes from, so Epstein was welcomed to plug himself in to harm children.

The United States is the only country in the world refusing to sign the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Think about that. The ONLY country that won’t protect children. The Epstein files now are required reading for parents around the world, because they show the reason.