This blogging series has been popular, so I’m continuing it.
#1: Yet Another Harvard Economics Professor Implicated in Jeffrey Epstein Pedophile Network
Since earlier this month I exposed misconduct by Harvard’s former Dean of the Faculty of Arts, it seems worth pointing to a Crimson story from last week about another former Dean of the very same faculty.
The Crimson just reported that Epstein not only arranged “massages” for Henry Rosovsky, former Faculty of Arts and Sciences, but also facilitated a $2 million gift to build Harvard Hillel’s Rosovsky Hall.
Convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell alleged that former Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Henry A. Rosovsky received a “massage” through disgraced billionaire and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s network, according to a transcript of a United States Department of Justice interview released on Aug. 22.
…
In 1991, Epstein helped facilitate a $2 million donation from billionaire Leslie H. Wexner to fund the construction of Harvard Hillel’s Rosovsky Hall, named in the former dean’s honor, though Epstein did not contribute his own money. Rosovsky also frequented Epstein’s Cambridge office during his tenure at the helm of the FAS.
#2: Nicholas Decker update
4 months ago, I profiled a GMU econ PhD student who defended pedophilia, obsessed over ‘transgender children,’ and argued for abolition of age of consent.
Decker urged leftists to rise up and begin indiscriminately killing Republicans, a call to violence that now takes on new relevance in light of Charlie Kirk’s murder.
Following his full-throated defense of pedophilia and successful incitement to violence, Decker tweeted that puberty is an “irreversible harm” and that children should not go through it.
He then spent several days defending bestiality, claiming that animals can consent to sex if they show “indicators of enjoyment” or “seem to like it.”
He declared that ‘‘queerness is a spectrum,’’ therefore bestiality is protected under the LGBT+ umbrella.
A week after defending bestiality, he became a vegan.
Decker then announced he’s spending this semester as a visiting student at MIT.
#3: Congress, DOE, & DOJ go to war with GMU
Speaking of GMU, this summer, the House Committee on Education and the Workforce sent a formal letter to GMU President demanding he appear for questioning to answer questions about GMU’s DEI programs. That hearing is expected to take place in early fall. If Washington refuses to testify voluntarily, the committee has floated the possibility of issuing a subpoena.
The impetus for this new congressional hearing appears to be an investigation by investigative journalist John Sailer, who exposed via FOIA requests how GMU ‘‘required every faculty hiring committee to carefully document how it prioritized diversity.’’
One hiring committee openly stated that it discussed ‘‘demographic diversity” as a part of candidates’ strengths/weaknesses, while another committee put in writing that out of 8 candidates there were “seven women of color, five of whom identify as African American, one as Palestinian American, and one as Iranian American; and a Korean American man...”
The U.S. Department of Justice’s then opened a formal investigation into GMU to determine whether it discriminates against employees on the basis of sex and race, including in promotion and tenure decisions. The probe will also review discrimination against students on the basis of race or national origin in admissions, scholarships, and other benefits, as well as the university’s handling of antisemitism on campus.
In late August, the Department of Education announced that GMU violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act by using race in hiring and promotion. They demanded that GMU issue a public apology. The president of GMU rejected DOE’s proposed resolution and refused to apologize, and is currently attempting to negotiate with them.
#4: Video update on Massive Fraud at MIT
Last month, I published a story about ‘‘undoubtedly the most blatant and brazen econ fraud of 2025.’’
For a long time, I’ve wanted to experiment with video as a funnel to bring more attention to my writing. This month I finally did it: I turned that MIT article into a TikTok, and to my surprise, it went mega-viral with 500k views, 50k likes, 3k comments, and a collective 13,000 hours of watch time.
It was quick, low production value, and improvised, yet it’s easily the most successful piece of media I’ve ever created. Watch:
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That video pushed me to 10.5k TikTok followers, next I’m aiming for 100k.
Follow me on that platform:
I also launched a YouTube channel to host longer videos and eventually turn some of my articles into full-length documentaries.
I have 84 YouTube subscribers so far, please be my 85th:
Does this expansion into video mean I’m pivoting away from writing? Not at all. If anything, I’m doubling down on Substack. The videos are a way to grow this community, and they’re already working... From just that one viral TikTok, I picked up a few hundred new substack subscribers. If you’re one of them: welcome! Drop a comment and say hi.
#5: MIT PhD Student Vanishes from Econometrica Paper
In economics, a revise-and-resubmit at Econometrica is the holy grail. For a graduate student, it all but guarantees a top placement. Which makes the latest authorship drama surrounding Extreme Value Theory with Heterogeneous Agents baffling: an MIT PhD student has been erased from the project that should have launched his career.
The paper, originally submitted in 2023 co-authored by Dr. Sephorah Mangin of Australian National University with MIT student Louis Becker, was accepted at Econometrica in 2025 without him.
A footnote explains blandly: “At the 2025 resubmission, Louis Becker requested to have his name removed as an author.”
That single footnote has lit the economics profession on fire.
Why would a graduate student abandon the most prestigious journal in the field?
And what changed between the 2023 draft and the 2025 version?
I’ve gone through both drafts, reached out to the journal, the authors, and their universities.
Here’s what I uncovered—
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