The key difference is that MIT had someone with decision making authority admit it to it on the record, i.e. Joi Ito, whereas Harvard did not. This is precisely what gave the whole Epstein debacle some fresh oxygen. In fact it may have been what tipped mostly vague conspiracy theories into a critical mass of undeniable reality.

Although there definitely were numerous folks at Harvard also doing dubious things they simply closed ranks and didn’t say anything substantial. They almost certainly are less straightforward than the MediaLab crowd, after all they have far more to lose since it was done directly under the school administration and not a semi-autonomous entity.

Doesn’t that seem like a very strong incentive for certain folks to do something to MIT? At the very least to discourage anyone at Harvard from getting funny ideas in their old age, and to encourage in the future immediate responses like Harvard and discourage another Ito when something like this happens again.

Because there probably are even more damaging things under wraps than the worst fantasies Epstein had, as another commenter alluded to with strange accounting anomalies of Defense research money in the several hundred million range, i.e that a significant percentage of the money going to MIT from the DoD was shady. If you extrapolate that to a nationwide scale, that’s a lot of billions going who knows where.