In recent months, small protests on the Ohio State University campus have focused on whether the school should keep prominent buildings named for Les Wexner, a billionaire retail mogul whose name appears in the records tied to Jeffrey Epstein. Similar calls have surfaced at Harvard, where students and faculty have asked to rename the Leslie H. Wexner Building and the Wexner-Sunshine Lobby. The effort is part of a broader backlash in higher education against donors and other prominent figures whose names surfaced in the Epstein files, with the pressure often landing on universities as well as academics whose Epstein-related emails became public.
For the protesters and supporters at Ohio State, the dispute centers on Wexner-linked facilities— including OSU’s Wexner Medical Center and the Les Wexner Football Complex— and on some students’ concerns about what passing the Wexner Center for the Arts means on campus. The requests are tied to Wexner’s well-documented association with Epstein, which advocates say taints decisions that helped shape institutional naming.
The AP report says a group of former Ohio State athletes who say they survived a sexual abuse scandal at the school argued that OSU cannot separate itself from those Epstein-related facts. Their naming removal request said, “Ohio State University cannot credibly separate itself from these facts, nor can it justify continuing to honor Les Wexner with an athletic facility.” It added that continuing to do so would “ignore the voices of survivors, former athletes, and the broader community who expect accountability, transparency, and moral leadership.”
At Harvard, students and faculty connected to the Kennedy School have targeted the Leslie H. Wexner Building and the Wexner-Sunshine Lobby as well. A renaming request submitted in March cites Wexner’s “strong ties to Epstein” and argues Epstein profited off Wexner. Harvard also has another naming dispute: some students and alumni have asked that the Farkas name be removed from Farkas Hall, which hosts the Hasty Pudding Theatricals Man and Woman of the Year. The building was renamed in 2011 after a donation from Andrew Farkas, graduate chairman of the Hasty Pudding Institute, honoring his father.
The report notes that Andrew Farkas had a personal and business relationship with Epstein, including co-owning a marina with him in the Caribbean, and that he also repeatedly asked Epstein to donate to Hasty Pudding. Between roughly 2013 and 2019, Epstein donated $50,000 annually for Andrew Farkas to secure top-tier donor status, for more than $300,000, the AP report says. In a statement, Farkas said, “As I’ve said repeatedly, I deeply regret ever having met this individual, but at no time have I conducted myself inappropriately,” and Harvard has said it received the Wexner-related name removal request but would not comment further.
Pressure to act is also appearing beyond OSU and Harvard. The report says Haverford College students voted last weekend to urge President Wendy Raymond to move ahead with the renaming process for the Allison & Howard Lutnick Library; Raymond had previously said in a February open letter she wasn’t ready to do that. Raymond said in a statement to the AP after the vote that she respected the process and would respond to the resolution within the customary 30-day period. At Ohio State, the school’s review of name-removal pleas is described as a five-step procedure carried out mostly outside public view, with no set timeline; Ohio State’s new president, Ravi Bellamkonda, said, “I think the process is thorough, fair, and open, and I will promise you that we will give each request a full consideration.”
Other schools described in the report include Tufts University, which said it continues to look at the matter involving Steve Tisch’s name, and that it has clarified the Tisch Library was named in 1992 for Tisch’s father, Preston Tisch. The report also says Tufts removed Steve Tisch’s handprints during spring break, describing it as part of a planned renovation. UCLA’s Wasserman Football Center and Stony Brook University’s Dubin Family Athletic Performance Center are also named for individuals who appear in the Epstein files, the report says.
The AP report frames the current push for name changes as part of a wider reckoning that echoes earlier controversies over donor-linked naming, including the Sackler family and the opioid crisis. It says some major institutions removed Sackler names, while Harvard did not, citing a 15-page report in which Harvard described Arthur M. Sackler’s legacy as “complex, ambiguous and debatable.” In the Epstein-linked cases, institutions’ clamor is typically connected to large philanthropic giving: the report notes that Wexner, his wife Abigail, and their charities have given Ohio State well over $200 million over the years, including $100 million for the Wexner Medical Center and at least $15 million for the Wexner Center for the Arts.
Ethics specialists and students say the disputes are now confronting universities with both moral and financial questions about how schools handle gift acceptance and how donors’ conduct is judged over time. Anne Bergeron, described as a museum consultant and author who specializes in ethics of building naming rights, said universities must weigh gift acceptance standards while recognizing that donor conduct may be evaluated differently over time. Bergeron said, “It’s no surprise that a lot of these situations arise within the university sphere, because with students — especially the younger generation — there is virtually no tolerance for being associated with anyone who doesn’t represent the best of humanity,” and she called this “a moment of reckoning” for universities, adding that schools have to guard against the appearance of a quid pro quo in their building namings.
Supporters of name removal say the issue also involves survivors and people who encounter these names daily. Lauren Barnes, a student at the Kennedy School, said she struggles with the idea that survivors may have to walk into a building with a name linked to Epstein, describing anxiety related to entering spaces connected to sexual abuse. Another protester at Ohio State, Audrey Brill, told an ABC affiliate that it now “feels gross” thinking about women delivering babies at the Wexner Medical Center “given everything that we’re learning about where this money went,” and that removing Wexner’s name could help.
The report also describes additional calls for removing names that appear alongside Epstein-related payments, including for Dr. Mark Landon, an Ohio State gynecologist who, the report says, received five-figure quarterly payments from Epstein between 2001 and 2005. Some protesters have asked that Landon’s name be removed from a visitor’s lounge in a new hospital tower that cost $2 billion and was described as a 26-story project; Landon has said the money was for biotech investment consulting for Wexner rather than health care for Epstein or his victims.
Sources in this cluster describe the campaign as an ongoing pressure effort rather than a finished accounting, with universities weighing whether to change names and, in some cases, responding through internal procedures. For students and survivors, however, the protests focus on what they describe as the daily impact of campus recognition— and the argument that the presence of a donor’s name is difficult to separate from the Epstein-associated relationships that now surround it.