Auckland academic responds after emails reveal Jeffrey Epstein funding offer

Monday, 2 February 2026

An Auckland academic says everything about paedophile Jeffrey Epstein “is icky”, telling TVNZ Breakfast that Epstein was “a smooth psychopath and narcissist”.

Former University of Auckland professor Brian Boyd appeared on Breakfast after emails between him and Epstein were released over the weekend, showing Epstein had offered to fund a book Boyd hoped to write.

“Everything about Epstein is icky,” Boyd said. “He’s a smooth psychopath and narcissist. So he could be charming, and he loved to collect names, and he was tossing them off all the time in his emails to me.”

Boyd said he was not concerned about being named in the emails, as he had done nothing “except respond with pleasure to the possibility of getting a year off teaching to write a book that I’ve been — that I was really wanting to work on”.

Boyd explained on Breakfast that he had been in the United States for a workshop on literature and evolution at Harvard University, where he was asked about being involved in research when he next returned to the states. He said it was the following month that Epstein — who funded the Harvard centre for evolution and dynamics — emailed him.

They later met for brunch, where there was discussion about Epstein potentially funding a book Boyd wanted to write. “It came to nothing in the end,” Boyd said. “That was the only time I met him.”

Boyd said he was already working on a biography, but “the book that was really bubbling in my mind was a book on Lolita”.

“So I said a book on Lolita, and his ears pricked up, and I didn’t know why, of course,” he said.

Boyd told Breakfast he had been told Epstein would attend the meeting with a couple of assistants, but said he was instead surrounded by four or five young women who were immaculately dressed. He said they were reportedly recent graduates, about 22 years old, but appeared younger. Boyd said he was unaware of any allegations against Epstein at the time.

Boyd is a world-leading scholar on Russian-American author Vladimir Nabokov and had planned to write a book on Nabokov’s 1955 novel Lolita, a critically acclaimed but controversial work that was reportedly one of Epstein’s obsessions.

The novel is narrated by Humbert Humbert, a professor who becomes sexually obsessed with a 12-year-old girl he calls Lolita.

Previously released US Justice Department material included images of Epstein writing passages from Lolita on the bodies of young women. His private plane was nicknamed the “Lolita Express”.

Epstein died in a New York jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges involving underage girls. His death was ruled a suicide.

In one July 2012 email released this weekend, Boyd discussed funding arrangements for the proposed book.

“You asked me how much money would that take. Being naturally antigrabbity, I said $50K… You promptly said that’s not enough and counterproposed $75K,” Boyd wrote.

“To do the book in a year I’d really need to take a full year of unpaid leave and be free of all university obligations here… that should indeed allow me to buy out of all my undergraduate teaching.”