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- Larry Summers will resign from teaching at Harvard during review of Epstein ties, university says (pbs.org)
Larry Summers to Retire from Harvard Amidst Epstein Review
Cambridge, MA – Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers will be stepping down from his teaching positions at Harvard University at the close of the current academic year. The announcement comes as the university reviews his connections to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, whose name has appeared hundreds of times in recently unsealed court documents.
Summers, who has been on leave since November, will retire from his academic and faculty appointments, according to a statement released Wednesday by Harvard spokesperson Jason Newton.
In his own statement, Summers acknowledged the difficulty of the decision and expressed gratitude to the students and colleagues he has worked with over five decades, including his five-year tenure as Harvard’s president. He indicated his intention to continue engaging in research, analysis, and commentary on global economic issues as President Emeritus and a retired professor.
The latest release of Justice Department files has sent ripples through the academic community, exposing Epstein’s ties to numerous researchers who sought his financial backing and friendship, even after his initial conviction as a sex offender. Summers’ resignation follows that of Dr. Richard Axel, a Nobel laureate, who announced his departure as co-director of Columbia University’s Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute on Tuesday.
Summers, who served as Treasury Secretary under former President Bill Clinton before leading Harvard from 2001, had a relationship with Epstein that spanned several years. The newly unveiled files shed light on this connection, detailing visits between the two at their homes in Massachusetts and New York, as well as email exchanges on various subjects, from politics and economics to personal relationships.
Emails from 2018 and 2019 reveal Summers consulting Epstein about a separate relationship with a woman he was tutoring in economics. Epstein reportedly described himself as Summers’ “wing man” and encouraged persistence.
In a 2018 email, Summers clarified that the woman was not his student but that he had known her father, a Chinese economic official, for over two decades. He also referenced his wife, Lisa, stating, “I have a very good life w Lisa kids etc.
Easy to put at risk for something that might not materialize at all or if it does might prove transient.”
A 2016 email also showed Summers appearing to use a derogatory term for Asian people while discussing an upcoming meeting between Epstein and a Chinese university official.
Last year, in response to earlier revelations, Summers expressed “great regrets” and called his association with Epstein a “major error in judgment.”
Harvard officials have remained largely silent regarding Summers’ relationship with Epstein. When Summers took leave last year, the university stated it was reviewing “individuals at Harvard” mentioned in the Epstein documents to determine if any actions were necessary.
A 2020 campus report on Epstein’s ties to Harvard, which detailed over $9 million in donations to the Ivy League institution, primarily to a center founded by professor Martin Nowak, did not mention Summers’ relationship. Nowak was later disciplined by the university.
In December, Summers received a lifetime ban from the American Economic Association and also stepped down from the board of directors at OpenAI.
At Columbia, Dr. Axel also expressed regret for his association with Epstein in a Tuesday statement, characterizing it as a “serious error in judgment.”
He will also relinquish his position as an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute but plans to continue his research and teaching at the Zuckerman Institute. Axel, a 2004 Nobel Prize winner, is mentioned over 600 times in the Justice Department files, including in emails and meeting schedules with Epstein.
In a 2007 article, while Epstein was under initial investigation, Axel publicly praised Epstein’s intellect.
These resignations are the latest repercussions stemming from the Justice Department’s recent release of millions of pages of records related to Epstein and his former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, impacting individuals across the academic, legal, and business sectors globally.