Larry Summers, in Final Career Blow, Will Leave Harvard Under Epstein Cloud

A former Harvard University president, Larry Summers, will resign from his teaching post at the Cambridge institution amid revelations about his relationship with the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.Mr. Summers will step down as co-director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at the Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard confirmed Wednesday. He will also surrender his title of university professor — an honor bestowed on a select few Harvard affiliates for “groundbreaking work” — by year’s end. He will remain on leave until then and will not return to teach.In a statement released Wednesday, the celebrated economist called his decision to leave “difficult” and said he “will always be grateful to the thousands of students and colleagues I have been privileged to teach and work with since coming to Harvard as a graduate student 50 years ago.”Mr. Summers’s departure caps a stunning fall from grace for the long-admired economist, whose achievements included service as Treasury secretary under President Clinton and as chief economist of the World Bank.Mr. Summers became embroiled in scandal last November when the release of more than 20,000 emails from Epstein’s estate shed new light on his intimate relationship with the convicted sex offender. That correspondence showed Mr. Summers maintained regular contact with Epstein from 2013 through July 2019 — years after the financier’s 2008 conviction on charges involving solicitation of prostitution from a minor — including messages on topics ranging from personal matters to professional advice. On several occasions Mr. Summers sought romantic counsel from Epstein, including regarding a woman he described as a mentee. “Think for now I’m going nowhere with her except economics mentor,” Mr. Summers wrote in November 2018. “I think I’m right now in the seen very warmly in rear view mirror category.”In one 2018 exchange, Epstein went as far so to refer to himself as Mr. Summers’ “wing man.” Mr. Summers was married at the time. The final email between the two was sent just one day before federal authorities arrested Epstein on new sex-trafficking charges in July 2019.Amid backlash over the emails, Mr. Summers stepped down from a string of public commitments, including his chairmanship of the board at the Center for Global Development and his board positions at OpenAI, the Peterson Institute for International Economics, Yale’s Budget Lab, and the Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project. Mr. Summers was also dropped from the New York Times Opinion section, where he had been hired in January 2025 to serve as a contributing writer. The Times’ executive director for media relations stated in November that the outlet did not intend to renew his contract when it concluded at year-end. Mr. Summers started the fall semester teaching five courses, including two large undergraduate economics classes, and initially sought to remain on faculty. Shortly after the emails surfaced, he opened one class by apologizing to students for his association with Epstein and asking their “permission” to “go forward and talk about the material.” He subsequently announced he would take leave. Harvard then launched a new investigation into Mr. Summers and his relationship with Epstein.While Epstein did not attend Harvard as a student, he maintained a close relationship with the school and donated at least $30 million as part of a series of anonymous gifts. A Crimson article from 2003 notes that Epstein “counts a number of professors” among “his bevy of eminent friends.”

Larry Summers, in Final Career Blow, Will Leave Harvard Under Epstein Cloud

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