The Beilock administration is about “brave spaces.” So why doesn’t that ethos extend to taking Leon Black ’73’s name off of the Black Family Visual Arts Center? What is Dartmouth leadership waiting for?
Mr. Black, a Dartmouth alumnus and megadonor, made payments to Jeffrey Epstein totaling $170 million between 2008 and 2012, following Mr. Epstein’s guilty plea to soliciting prostitution in a case involving minors. The stated justification was tax and estate planning advice. If true, that must have been some magnificent tax and estate planning advice. As the billionaire co-founder and CEO of Apollo Global Management, one the largest investment firms in the world, wouldn’t Mr. Black have had access to the best tax and estate planning money could buy?
The Epstein files reveal a different reality: payments consistent with silencing accusers, not optimizing a portfolio. In a 2023 settlement agreement with the Attorney General of the U.S. Virgin Islands, Mr. Black acknowledged in black and white that Mr. Epstein used the money Mr. Black paid him to “partially fund his operations in the Virgin Islands.” Mr. Black has never offered a credible accounting of what $170 million in “advisory fees” actually bought. You can decide for yourself what he spent it on.
Mr. Black’s foundation’s gift to Dartmouth for the Black Family Visual Arts Center also has Epstein’s fingerprints all over it. Mr. Epstein was listed in public records as the foundation’s director through 2012. Dartmouth’s gifting process for BVAC began in 2009, and the Epstein files make clear that Mr. Epstein was personally and directly involved in that process.
Against this backdrop, Dartmouth continues to prominently honor Mr. Black in perpetuity.
In doing so, Dartmouth requires that students must be educated in the shadows of a monument not just to Leon Black, but to a curated image of him as a philanthropist, arts patron and family man. Meanwhile, untold numbers of real families are grappling daily with the aftermath of the actions of Mr. Black, his money and his beneficiary, Epstein.
Dartmouth forces students who have experienced sexual violence and human trafficking to revisit what power is and what control means, in a hostile learning environment. I think about what it feels like for them to register for an art class under these circumstances.
In their refusal to change the name, Dartmouth’s administration sullies Hanover and normalizes Epstein’s apparatus, all without explanation.
And 24 hours a day, Dartmouth broadcasts this rot to its future rich guys: The margins for morality have no limits if you get rich enough.
The Dartmouth Student Government and Student and Presidential Committee on Sexual Assault just called for Dartmouth to rename the Center. In March, Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., blasted Dartmouth for keeping BVAC’s name after seeing it on a visit to Hanover to speak at the Rockefeller Center for Public Policy. Just two weeks ago, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Or., and the Senate Committee on Finance sent Mr. Black a letter of inquiry detailing the current status of the committee’s investigation into his dealings with Mr. Epstein; it’s quite a read.
Yet week after week, Dartmouth quietly renews its vows to Mr. Black’s preferred legacy. This community deserves answers.
Dartmouth’s last substantive statement on this was in 2021. The school used it to promote Mr. Black’s nonapology: “Leon Black has stated that he is appalled by Epstein and deeply regrets his involvement with him,” a Dartmouth spokesperson told the New York Times. A clear case of regretting the truth coming to light, not the life lived.
As a career public defender in this country’s two-tiered justice system, I know that no one is likely to throw Mr. Black in jail. But we aren’t talking about jail. President Beilock isn’t a local prosecutor trying to evaluate whether she can prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. The stakes are not civil rights, but privileges of the highest order.
Dartmouth is one of the few institutions with the legal and financial resources sufficient to support the only defensible position on this. I imagine the Trustees are worried about a threat of litigation from Mr. Black. But who is better situated than Dartmouth and its $9 billion dollar endowment to stand up on this? Dartmouth, Harvard University, The Ohio State University and other universities seem to be having a gruesome staring contest.
Let’s be very clear: President Beilock is in the position to answer these questions of ethics and optics. Dartmouth has always claimed to be focused on its undergraduates’ learning experience first.
President Beilock has never commented publicly on mounting pressure for BVAC to be renamed. Nor has her office replied — not so much as to confirm receipt — to the several emails I have sent her directly on this topic over the past few months. I’m just an Asian woman and I don’t donate, so I don’t know what I expected.
If there is some good reason for keeping Mr. Black’s name on that building, why won’t they say it? If it persuades them, maybe it could persuade us. I can only surmise that they know that it will not.
President Beilock and Trustees: Please. Change the name. Or make the case to this community why not.
Ms. Mendenhall is a member of the Dartmouth Class of 2002 and a public defender in California and New York. Guest columns represent the views of their author(s), which are not necessarily those of The Dartmouth.
