Prominent Harvard alumnus and megadonor Gerald L. Chan coordinated with child sex offender Jeffrey E. Epstein in late 2016 to explore establishing a Boston-area extension of Tsinghua University, according to emails released Friday by the Department of Justice.
The correspondence shows that Shing-Tung Yau, a longtime Harvard mathematics professor who left the University in 2022 to join Tsinghua’s faculty, played a central role in connecting Chan and Epstein amid efforts to deepen ties between Harvard and the elite Beijing-based institution.
Yau drafted preliminary plans for a Tsinghua campus in Boston in mid-2016 in an email marked confidential — and, that November, introduced Chan to Epstein as a potential financier. In an email to Epstein, Yau wrote that Chan was “interested in” the project and “interested in meeting you,” according to the Friday files.
Shortly thereafter, Epstein and Chan arranged a lunch meeting in December 2016 at the now-shuttered Parsnip restaurant in Harvard Square to discuss the proposal.
Two years earlier, Chan — a venture capitalist — had donated $350 million to the Harvard School of Public Health, the second-largest gift in University history. The school was subsequently renamed in honor of his late father.
Though the Boston offshoot ultimately did not materialize, the documents reveal it was the culmination of years of coordination among Epstein, Yau, and Harvard professor Martin A. Nowak to establish closer ties between Harvard and Tsinghua, widely regarded as one of the most prestigious universities in China.
Across at least a dozen emails, Yau served as a middleman between Epstein and senior Tsinghua officials.
In an April 2016 email, Yau wrote to an assistant of Epstein that Tsinghua University is “talking seriously to run a branch here.”
One month later, Epstein met with Tsinghua President Qiu Yong in New York, according to correspondence between Yau and the assistant of Epstein. Qiu was in the city at the time to meet with then-Harvard President Drew G. Faust.
A May 2017 email from Yau connected Epstein to a proposal to foster a relationship between Tsinghua and an institution referred to as “IAS” and noted that “we are devising similar thing” with Harvard.
Later that year, Qiu extended an invitation for Epstein to visit the Tsinghua campus in Beijing in October 2016. The released emails do not indicate whether the trip occurred.
Tsinghua University, a public research institution that enrolls more than 16,000 undergraduates, has risen rapidly in international rankings over the past decade.
Yau, an acclaimed mathematician who taught at Harvard for 35 years, met with Epstein as early as 2011. He is part of a broader network of Harvard professors who maintained relationships with Epstein long after the University publicly severed ties with him following Epstein’s 2008 conviction for soliciting prostitution from a minor.
In a November email to The Crimson, Yau wrote that his “only interaction” with Epstein had been through Nowak and claimed he “did not know his background whatsoever.” He also wrote that no one in China was interested in Epstein’s proposal to visit the country, and that it was never pursued.
Chan and Yau did not immediately respond to requests for comment Friday afternoon.
—Staff writer Hugo C. Chiasson can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on X @HugoChiassonn or on Signal at hcc.35.
—Staff writer Elise A. Spenner can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on X @EliseSpenner.
