A decade ago, I heard a talk by an environmental activist in Chennai. This person almost always worked in settings with significant resource constraints and on activities that society had a tendency to overlook. Jeffrey Epstein had not been the well-known name it has become in India, and around the world, today. But the activist raised a point that later seemed very relevant when Epstein’s ties to George Church, Joi Ito, and other scientists became clear. The activist said he does not think twice about taking money from people with tarnished reputations because, for his work, having any money at all was more important than the money being ‘clean’ by some arbitrary moral standard.
However, the activist was also clear he was aware that accepting donations in this way could ‘whitewash’ the donors’ reputation and launder their money. He said the problem was not that he was providing this “service”, so to speak, but that his work and his priorities had rendered his situation only somewhat better than that of a beggar.
It could be objectionable that Church and Ito took Epstein’s money because their employers — Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) — are already vastly wealthy and can afford to be more careful about whose money they allow to enter the research ecosystem.
Policies on screening
In India, the CSIR Guidelines say donations and grants are only to be accepted after “adequate screening”. This policy stipulates that a corpus of funds shouldn’t harm the reputation of the institution or its stakeholders, the donation shouldn’t be treated as influencing government-related studies or certifications, and the respective lab director is empowered to exercise their judgment after vetting the donor’s profile. More pertinently, the University Grants Commission uses the ‘Good Academic Research Practices’ framework, which emphasises “distributive justice” to ensure research benefits the community. So a scientist might argue that taking tainted money for a project that solves a local crisis would fulfil this mandate, even if the source is problematic.
In 2003, the magazine CERN Courier reported that Epstein “gave string theorists associated with the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai a cheque for $100,000”, to be managed by Harvard University”. The “gift” had been “facilitated” by theoretical physicist Andrew Strominger.
After a new release from the Epstein files revealed the same thing recently, at least one social media commentator interpreted the donation as warranting an audit of research funding in India. Again, while $100,000 is a considerable sum of money even today, and setting aside the fact that in 2003 Epstein had not yet been in the crosshairs of law enforcement, that Harvard University brought the funds from Epstein rather than from other sources speaks more to its own fiscal priorities at the time than anything else. Equally, Strominger’s and Harvard president Larry Summers’s gratitude to Epstein in 2018 for the donation, after his racket had come to light, is fishy.
A conundrum
But setting aside the plight of scientists employed at relatively better endowed universities, what of those working in more constrained environments with fewer sources of steady funding for less risky research? In India, research funding is often tied to bureaucratic cycles. In this context, a scientist might reason that the moral harm of the donor is abstract while the material harm of failing to fund a lab, resulting in the loss of scholarships for what could be first-generation PhD students, is concrete and immediate.
There is also a growing discourse in Indian science about decolonising research funding together with research itself. If a scientist rejects western philanthropic money on moral grounds, they may continue to depend on state funding that is sometimes unpredictable.
Some might even argue that taking private money, even from a controversial source, is a strategic move towards institutional autonomy, provided of course that there are zero strings attached.
Indian institutional culture also often values discretion whereas ethical funding requires radical transparency. For it to be ‘okay’, then, a donation must be public. And if a donor like Epstein insists on naming rights to wash their image, the scientist is no longer doing science; they are providing a PR service. In the Indian context, where public trust in science is vital for scientific temper, ‘secret’ money can be more damaging than tainted money.
Consider a fictitious, cash-strapped research centre in Tamil Nadu called the Kaveri Institute. A billionaire being investigated for exploitative labour practices offers the institute ₹10 crore. The institute’s director reasons that this money could fund a five-year study on drought-resistant paddy that would help 20 lakh local farmers, and decides to accept the money on two conditions: first, the billionaire’s name will never appear on any building or paper, and second, the institute will publish a ‘statement of funding’ that explicitly mentions the donor is under investigation (the MIT Media Lab did the opposite of this), thus preventing the donor from using the gift to launder their reputation. Would not the director be right to assume these measures effectively hijack the wealth for the public good?
Reasoning through this quagmire requires us to move from a simple question of moral purity, which only says “never touch bad money”, to one of functional ethics, which asks how some money can do the most good while exacting the least social cost. For an Indian scientist, the conclusion is often that the money is acceptable only if the scientist retains absolute intellectual sovereignty and the donor is denied any reputational dividends.
Two perspectives
The utilitarian approach asks (rhetorically) that when funding, regardless of its source, enables a breakthrough, does the benefit to millions outweigh the moral stain of the donor? In this view, money has no inherent morality; only its application does. If the funds are diverted from a criminal’s pocket to a laboratory where they can save lives, it could be a net moral gain.
In India, the Gross Expenditure on R&D (GERD) has hovered around 0.7% of GDP, compared to 2-3% in the U.S. or China, so rejecting a large grant would be much worse than a minor setback: it could mean the end of a decade-long research programme. The harm of rejecting the money is therefore the loss of scientific progress that could have helped people.
On the other hand, the deontological perspective argues that certain actions are fundamentally wrong, regardless of the consequences. By accepting the money, the scientist or institution enters into a partnership and becomes complicit, which can be seen as validating the donor. Even if the scientist finds the donor’s actions repulsive, the act of taking the check creates a functional association. Some ethicists have in fact argued that using such funds taints research itself, rendering the scientist a secondary beneficiary of the donor’s crimes.
High-profile criminals also use donations to elite institutions to cleanse their public image. When Epstein was photographed with Nobel Laureates or world-renowned researchers, it created social capital he could use to deflect scrutiny or gain access to other influential circles. If a scientist comes to depend on such a donor, their academic freedom could be subtly compromised because they may feel a debt of gratitude that prevents them from speaking out or researching topics that might offend the benefactor.
Moral gatekeeping
However, the reasoning should change when we move from a well-funded Ivy League institute to a resource-starved setting because the ethical luxury of turning down money is not distributed equally. For a scientist at Harvard University, say, losing one donor might mean a smaller lab; for a scientist in India, it could mean the difference between having a lab at all and brain-draining to the west.
There is also a stinging irony when western institutions, which have historically benefited from colonial wealth and/or tainted industrial fortunes, lecture scientists in the Global South about ‘purity’ in funding. If the global funding system is inherently rigged, is it ethical to demand that those at a disadvantage adhere to the most rigid moral gatekeeping?
Ultimately, the okay-ness depends on whether the scientist views themselves as a moral gatekeeper, thus refusing to touch the money, or as a pragmatic agent who can turn bad money into good outcomes. And in India, the sheer lack of alternatives often renders the weight of the latter much heavier.
mukunth.v@thehindu.co.in