Ghislane has deep ties to the publication industry. Jeffrey had connections with industry leaders. Academics love a good party and the chance to rub shoulders with influential and wealthy people.
Also the academics probably wanted a chance to fuck children
Epstein was a spy who was expected to gather intelligence. Of course he was going to build his intelligence network with anyone that he could corrupt.
Or anyone he could use. That’s the thing about espionage. You don’t have to be in on it to benefit the people taking advantage of you.
Academics do have a lot of influence in a lot of ways, especially to a country like Israel. Their main opposition is to a large degree students that organize and expose the Israelis forcing their 5 to 6 million palestinians into ghettos and trying to final solution them.
As such, the more academics you corrupt, you can get a line on getting inside information at those schools, and members fiercely opposed to protests and protesters.
But they aren’t administrators that we know of, and those are the ones with the power in schools. Although the administration did only not redact the ones they didn’t like or that hadn’t worked out a deal, and couldn’t themselves release information that would harm the administration or their allies.
So maybe my theory doesn’t quite work?