File 028882
Email from Elisa New to Jeffrey Epstein About Poetry in America Funding Proposal (File 028882)
Email from Harvard professor Elisa New requesting a $500,000 contribution from Jeffrey Epstein for the Poetry in America project, detailing production plans and prominent interviewees.
Summary
Elisa New, Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature at Harvard University, emails Jeffrey Epstein to propose a $500,000 donation for the Poetry in America initiative. The project aims to produce post-production and distribution work on American poetry from 1914-1945 (Modernism era), including three television episodes. New outlines the interviews already conducted or planned, including footage with Bill Clinton, and describes how the funding would support Harvard's Teaching and Learning campaign through the EdLabs Poetry in America program, with proceeds benefiting both HarvardX and WGBH.
From: Lisa NewSent: 10/27/2014 1:48:05 PMTo: Jeffrey Epstein [jeeyacation@gmail.com]Subject: writing up proposalImportance: HighDear Jeffrey,Larry has told me that you and a friend would like to contribute to my project (hallelujah and thank you amillion times, Jeffrey) and that I ought to write up a proposal asking for 500,000. This is wonderful. If thiscomes to pass, the best way for that money to come, I think, is as a gift to Poetry in America, an initiative atEdLabs at Harvard University. This will give me discretion over its disbursement to HarvardX and WGBH, butthis will be absolutely be a Harvard gift that will count as Campaign success and from which Harvard will takesome (but not as much)overhead. . So far the best finance people I've met are at EdLabs and they are happy tomanage these funds for me. There are other ways to give me this money that leave Harvard out, but myunderstanding is that your friend would like this to be a Harvard gift.Here's a draft of what I'd like to do with that money.I'd like 500,000 to do post-production and distribution of a whole historical period of American poetry (1914-1945 is what I'm thinking—Modernism) and including three episodes of tv.The raw materials for that period include interviews with Bill Clinton (including footage not yet used byWGBH), Peter Gallison, Walter Isaacson, Lena Dunham, Woody Allen (whose lawyers didn't like our release awhile ago, but we're hoping will soften over time), Harrison Ford (still a maybe), Robert Polito, Sarah Kay, AlFilreis, Rafael Campo, Susan Howe, kids from Nantucket High School, kids from Brookline HighSchool, Alfre Woodard, Jane Pickering, Jay Parini, Ray Dalio, Leon Wieseltier, Richard Dawkins and others;and footage shot in Harlem, Greenwich Village, midtown, Chicago, London (if I have the money to hire a crewthere; don't now ), at museums including the Fogg, Harvard Museum of Natural History, Frost's house in RiptonVermont and more.This allows the donor to give to a big Harvard Campaign priority, Teaching and Learning , by supporting Poetryin America, allowing me to produce the crucial segment of the online course with the highest (TV quality)production values and so also supplying higher quality video to WGBH as a way also to cut their costs.Currently, HarvardX skimps (on lighting, for instance--see the Bill Clinton interview) and while WGBH ladlesmoney raised by others into everything. I have been pounding away at my friends at WGBH and I know thatWGBH producer will work with HarvardX if they can give him footage of the right quality. . That is, we'll useHarvardX as the backlot for WGBH so as to squeeze three episodes out for 250.This proposal does not include experiments in schools or the curricular development into courses for teachersthat you've seen in other (million dollar ) proposals. But the courses for teachers can't happen before thefootage is developed, and these courses will have as their centerpiece the WGBH episodes, and so this fundingwill make all the rest possible.I can polish this narrative and or edit it, if there are things you think I have wrong.And I can attach a draft budget based on real Harvard numbers (what my Harvard video editor, producer, mediamanager cost) as well as a draft WGBH budget I'll now go an negotiate with them. Or we can do that at asecond stage.HOUSE OVERSIGHT 028882Let me know what you think? And when are we reading Whitman together. Why don't we set a date for Febwhen Poetry in America 3: Whitman is running online and we could screen a little video and then have adiscussion around your table with you and some friends?LisaElisa NewPowell M. Cabot Professor of American LiteratureHarvard University148 Barker Center12 Quincy StreetCambridge, MA02138HOUSE OVERSIGHT 028883