MIT wined and dined Jeffrey Epstein as it solicited millions of dollars in donations from the convicted pedophile — and once bizarrely gave him a giant marble as a gift, according to a new report.
Professor Neri Oxman, tapped to court Epstein, presented the grapefruit-sized, 3-D-printed marble with a lighted base as a thank-you to the predator perv, who gave Oxman’s design lab $125,000, the Boston Globe reported.
The marble came with a pair of gloves to prevent fingerprints from smudging it, the paper reported.
Oxman, a designer whose work has been featured in Vogue magazine and by the Smithsonian Institution, is married to hedge fund billionaire William Ackman. She made headlines last year when reports surfaced Brad Pitt had a “crush” on the esteemed prof.
Disgraced former MIT Media Lab Director Joichi Ito asked her and other professors to solicit donations from Epstein and write the convicted pedophile thank-you notes. She was also invited to dine with him on several occasions, requests she said she declined.
But in 2017, after the lab got the $125,000, Ito requested that Oxman send a token of her appreciation to his Manhattan townhouse, and she gifted him the massive marble.
When rumors began to swirl about Oxman’s Epstein links, her husband wrote to Ito about how to deal with questions from reporters.
“I don’t want to see her forced into a position where to protect her name she is required to be transparent about everything that took place at MIT with Epstein,” Ackman reportedly wrote.
“Anything other than perfect transparency will make her look like she is hiding something. This has regretfully become a witch hunt.”
Oxman was also sworn to stay silent about the Epstein’s cash, a claim consistent with a bombshell Sept. 6 New Yorker report detailing the lengths MIT went to conceal the donations, the paper said.
Ito has since resigned.
Oxman, 43, acknowledged her role in MIT’s relationship with Epstein in a statement to the Globe.
“I regret having received funds from Epstein, and deeply apologize to my students for their inadvertent involvement in this mess,” Oxman said in a statement.
