The University of Maine System is considering whether to remove George Mitchell’s name from two honorary placements, after his name appeared more than 300 times in the latest release of files related to the late financier and convicted child sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein.
The university system has two organizations named for the 92-year-old former Senate majority leader from Maine.
The George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions, a research facility that supports various climate, environmental and health initiatives; and the George J. Mitchell Peace Scholarship program, which provides two scholarships per year for students to study at UMaine or University College Cork in Ireland, are both located at UMaine’s Orono campus.
UMaine System spokesperson Samantha Warren told the Maine Campus that the system will “evaluate available and emerging information and make thoughtful decisions that reflect our values and serve the best interests of our students and the state.” She added that the system “strongly condemns sexual violence and exploitation.”
It would not be the first renaming over a controversy. In 2020, students successfully petitioned to remove the name of former UMaine President Clarence C. Little, a eugenics advocate and spokesperson for the tobacco industry, from a campus building bearing his name.
The Umaine Board of Trustees approved the change and renamed the building after Beryl Warner Williams, a Bangor native who was the first Black person to earn a bachelor’s degree in mathematics at the university in 1935.
Renaming either of the George Mitchell namesakes would fall outside the purview of the Board of Trustees because the board’s authority is limited to building names and does not include names of programs or building interiors, according to the Maine Campus.
Since the latest Epstein document dump, Mitchell’s name has been removed from a scholarship program by the U.S.-Ireland Alliance, his bust was removed from a college campus in Northern Ireland, and he resigned as the honorary chairman of the Mitchell Institute, a Maine educational program that is now considering renaming itself.
In Maine, Waterville Public Schools are considering a request from parents to remove Mitchell’s name from an elementary school. Mitchell’s name also graces a public park in Harpswell, where there had been no official discussions of renaming as of last week, according to the town administrator.
Mitchell and Epstein were friends for years. Epstein called the Maine politician the world’s greatest negotiator in a 2003 magazine profile, the same year that Mitchell wrote Epstein a letter calling their friendship a “blessing.”
Since 2019, Mitchell has maintained he has never met Virginia Giuffre, who said she was trafficked to him by Epstein in documents that were unsealed that year. He also has said that he cut off contact with the disgraced financier after Epstein’s Florida conviction on sex offenses in 2008.
The recently released tranche shows Epstein tried to schedule meetings with Mitchell in the years after that. There is also an FBI document that appears to contain allegations from a second woman alleging she was trafficked to Mitchell.
A Mitchell spokesperson reiterated earlier denials in a statement after the new release of files, saying he never had sex with any underage girls.