Latest Epstein Exits Include UCLA’s Tramo, Chapman’s Horner

Several more prominent professors have parted ways with or are being investigated by their institutions months after their names appeared in the Department of Justice’s latest cache of Epstein files.

The January drop was the largest release of documents pertaining to the department’s investigation into the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and academics’ names have routinely surfaced in the emails, though none have been implicated in his crimes. In ensuing weeks, institutions have opened probes into their professors’ ties to Epstein and in some cases have suspended faculty as a result. For example, Yale University has temporarily removed computer science professor David Gelernter, and former Harvard University president Larry Summers resigned from his faculty position late last month.

Among the latest group of faculty facing consequences for their communications with Epstein is Mark Tramo, a neurology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. He told The Daily Bruin in an email Friday that he plans to retire in June and will cancel his spring classes. About a month prior, UCLA’s Undergraduate Students Association Council passed a resolution criticizing Tramo’s communications with Epstein and condemning the university’s decision to stay silent on the issue. The council followed up with a letter to UCLA chancellor Julio Frank and administrators that demanded administrators put Tramo on leave and investigate his communications with Epstein.

Tramo communicated with Epstein somewhat regularly between 2010 and 2019, after he was convicted of soliciting a minor for prostitution in 2008, and he sometimes passed along students looking for research opportunities with Epstein. Epstein’s charity gave $100,000 to Tramo’s Institute for Music and Brain Science in 2017. Tramo did not reply to Inside Higher Ed’s request for comment.

John “Jack” Horner, a paleontologist and lecturer at Chapman University, left the university after his name surfaced in the January tranche of Epstein files, a Chapman spokesperson confirmed. It’s unclear whether Horner left voluntarily or if he was terminated. Horner visited Epstein’s ranch in 2012 on an apparent hunt for fossils on the property. He did not return Inside Higher Ed’s request for comment.

Harvard officials placed Martin Nowak, a math and biology professor, on paid administrative leave late last month as the university investigates new information about his relationship to Epstein, The Harvard Crimson reported. The investigation will determine “whether Professor Nowak violated [Faculty of Arts and Sciences] or University policies and standards of professional conduct,” FAS dean Hopi Hoekstra wrote in an email to faculty published by the Crimson. The university will arrange for another professor to teach his one spring-term class on evolutionary dynamics.

In 2021, Harvard shuttered Nowak’s Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, barred him from taking on new advisees and prohibited him from becoming the principal investigator on any grants after officials first looked into his ties to Epstein. Nowak continued to teach undergraduates during that time, and the sanctions were lifted in 2023.

Epstein made a $6.5 million donation to the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, which hosted Epstein at least 40 times, the Crimson reported. Nowak helped facilitate an on-campus office and key-card access for Epstein for several years after his 2008 conviction, according to the 2020 Harvard report.