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 (Photo 1).







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.







That’s when I first learned about the sexual charges. There had been no indication to me whatsoever that he had any sexual problems at all, much less with under-age girls, for which he was about to be sent to lock-up. Indeed I never saw anyone under age 20 near him before or after—male, female or neuter. This was a part of his life he kept completely segregated from me, with this one exception.







Regarding jail I told him that he should in general be cautious and stick to himself—avoid the male/male hell, live the solitary monk’s life as much as you could—and be aware, as he surely was, that as a child molester he was especially vulnerable. In prison to murder a molester was often a badge of honor—he fortunately was in a county jail but the principle was the same.







Why did he ask me? He knew that I had been imprisoned multiple times, usually for short intervals, and often connected with manic/depressive episodes but including my time with Huey Newton and the Panthers and time jailed in Jamaica—so I had experience with that world,







Later meetings with him were (with one exception) lunches preceded by a personal meeting about an hour long. These all occurred at his home in Manhattan or Palm Beach, depending on where I was at the time. Typically he would join me shortly after arrival and we would talk, sometimes about scientific work, especially my latest, sometimes about our common Jewish pedigrees. He once asked me why I was attracted to black women and later laughed when I reversed the argument and asked him why he was attracted to white women. He told me about Belorussians, famously good-looking white Russians, and I believe he may have had several—mid ‘20’—in his employ as office assistants.







How he came to offer support of my research I can’t remember. I thought of it as being mutual but I believe he took the lead. Perhaps saying, “Could you use $20,000?” or something like that.







He was notably generous. Two examples.











He had promised me $30,000 for my knee symmetry work, but had then forgotten to send the check. This was very unusual since he usually sent it within two days. After a month I wrote suggesting the check may have gotten lost in the mail. At once came the check and an apology but better yet the check had grown from 30 to 40 thousand, so he had imposed a penalty on himself to my benefit for late delivery! Incredible. Who else does that? My fantasy was to draw in my waist tighter and go for an extra month’s penalty!







His second act was more striking still. I was standing on a corner in NYC when I got a call from Jeffrey. After he handled what was on his mind, he asked what I was up to. I explained I was on a street corner waiting for an appointment I had with a Dean of Hunter College for a one-year teaching position. If it could grow into a permanent part-time position, it would be extremely advantageous. Jeffrey at once suggested that if it would be helpful I could say that a benefactor would donate $100,000 to Hunter to support the position, 80 to be in a research account under my control, the remaining 20 for them to use as they saw fit. There was no use for it then, but later I asked if the offer was still good elsewhere. It was.







Stories about Jeffrey proliferated. There was the time in London when Jeffrey visited the Royal Society in order to meet the head of the Society, Robert May, a famous Evolutionary Ecologist and Crafoord Prize winner. This was typical of Jeffrey. He wanted to meet the best of the best. Bob May, in turn, got right to the point. “I hear you have made all your money through illegal means.” Jeffrey: “They were not illegal when I did them.”







It was said that when the thoroughly anti-Jewish Iranian Prime Minister of Iran Ajmadinejad visited NYC for a UN meeting, he promptly met with Jeffrey to discuss finances. I have no idea if this is true, but believe it was. Jeffrey seemed to have the ability to predict the movement of money ahead of time, especially large movements. If so, he would indeed be in international demand. He had been befriended by Fidel Castro and spent a week with him in Cuba. He was, I believe, welcome in Saudi Arabia.







The point is that I enjoyed Jeffrey as an organism, a very bright and far-ranging mind with personal integrity as far as his dealings with me.







I MAKE A BIG BAD MISTAKE.







Around 2014, I was being harassed over the phone by a hostile interviewer—what had Jeffrey done, when and why, over and over? I was within an inch of saying what I should have—namely that I knew nothing more than he did—we had both read the same police report, so why didn’t he report on his own knowledge. Instead, I veered off into stupidity-land and said something I regretted within days and have ever since.







I had never been consulted regarding Jeffrey nor did I make any public statements about him. His name only appeared (or rather his Research Foundations) in the acknowledgements section of scientific papers published with his help (this is a requirement).







However, this is what I chose to say:







“By the time they’re 14 or 15, they’re like grown women were 60 years ago, so I don’t see these acts as so heinous.”







This is a very stupid statement on multiple grounds. First, I was suggesting that age of sexual consent is set by age of sexual maturity. Second, there is no reason to assume that a sexually-mature 14 year old is less harmed by sexual molestation than one without. No relevant theory or data.







Third, the argument tended to minimize Jeffrey’s sin—from “heinous” to “not so heinous”. So it functioned to mitigate anger and moralistic outrage that not only was there a very wealthy pedophile but he was linked to many other brains, scientists, financial people and so on. What made my mistake even worse was the account later published (2018) in the Miami Herald that Jeffrey’s sickness and misbehavior was far more advanced and frequent than described in 2005. So my insensitive statement looked all the worse. People literally wanted to fry me in oil. When someone added my children to the fritters I got angry. The Bible itself says the sins of the parents should not be visited on the children.







I have been called a racist for accepting money from Jeffrey (and three other sources) to do work showing that (1) in Jamaica 8 year-old children whose knees are more symmetrical run faster when they are 22 and that (2) elite Jamaican sprinters—who are the best of the best—whose knees are more symmetrical are the very best—world-wide. How in God’s name is this racist? Another organism noted that the rural data were based on “poor people” being induced by large subject payments. First, the sample was as random as we could get it, everyone attending a large elementary school. Second, large subject payments are bad? Quite the contrary—and the poorer the recipient the better. The payments tend to breed loyalty to the project, including showing up to be re-measured and are intrinsically beneficial to the recipients.







Jeffrey’s Imprisonment and Death







When I read that a judge had vacated an earlier Federal ruling that had protected Jeffrey years before from imprisonment I wrote him a brief note of compassion. Trump had appointed the judge (Acosta) with the original ruling to a Cabinet post (Labor), so the immediate implications for Epstein were going to be publicly underscored.







He wrote back a surprising message saying, “no problem, everything under control”. Shortly thereafter he sent me a NY Times op-ed piece a by four top-level defense lawyers arguing why the Judge’s ruling left Jeffrey completely safe. I doubted it on the spot. Sure enough on July 6 at Peterboro Airport, NJ, after his return from Paris on his private jet, he was arrested by Federal agents to be taken to a NYC/Super-Max where El Chapo was held. His cell-mate was a police officer accused of murdering four men. He was facing a charge of child trafficking and conspiracy to engage in trafficking (total: 45 years in prison). He was 66 years old.







The success rate of trials in Federal sex trafficking cases is their highest ~90%. The higher the security of prison the more restrictive the life for the prisoner—while he is only safe if staff are not conspiring to reduce his safety.







Within 6 weeks on August 10 he was found dead by strangulation. Suicide, murder, assisted suicide? Not certain. Guards failed to attend to his cell for several hours, allegedly while sleeping, and he had not been given a cell-mate as required of any inmate having shown suicidal tendencies. Attorney General Barr declared it to be suicide but since he is a notorious liar, that says very little. Jeffrey was capable of suicide. What is certain is that he paid the full and final price.







In reaction to his death, guilt by association and the cancellation culture sprang into action.







“Epstein is dead, and now beyond the reaches of human justice, but it is still possible to hold his enablers and scientific sycophants to account. It is necessary, but not enough, to demand that individuals like Trivers and Nowak…return the millions they received from Epstein.







No, I did not receive “millions”, but $160,000. Why do I owe it to anyone? The money was put to good scientific use, none of it biased regarding women. Nor was there any connection between the money received and Jeffrey’s sexual activities.







Then it is suggested that my life’s work has “naturalized, and even…excused male sexual violence.” “…evolutionary biology is not the sole province of reactionary white men”.







Well—praise Jesus for that! I wrote the original paper for a general theory of sex differences in all species. Fifty years later it is alive and well, having provided the foundation for a science of the subject, and is cited more often than any paper in all of evolutionary biology, >17,500 times, including by top feminist scholars—Smuts, Hrdy, Gowaty among many others. Does it argue that men are expected to be more promiscuous than women, as is claimed by some of these critics? No it does not, Fisher showed in 1930 that for every heterosexual promiscuous act by a man, there must be one by a woman—sex ratio theory demands it.







Finally I have a lifetime commitment to the welfare of women.







According to natural selection, offspring come first, females, their primary creators, second—last, and least, males.







I have taught for 50 years without a single female complaint of any sort, no hand on a knee or “this Office Hours is so interesting perhaps we should continue it over lunch”. And I have been tried in court for “assault occasioning bodily harm” for defending a woman from an abusive boyfriend. I have been involved in other similar cases whose details I do not wish to share. Suffice it to say, I do not tolerate abuse in my presence and I am willing to pursue serious abusers outside my presence.