Funding from disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted sex offender who took his own life in August while imprisoned on new charges, has raised serious questions for general counsel at universities around the country about how to handle reputational risks from tainted donors.

Nowhere have those questions hit harder than at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston where the school’s president, L. Rafael Reif, said Thursday that a probe has found links to him and his senior administrators from Epstein donations.