Summers To Resign From Teaching Appointments, Relinquish University Professorship Over Epstein Ties | News
Former Harvard President Larry Summers will resign from his academic and faculty appointments at Harvard at the end of the academic year, relinquishing his University Professorship — Harvard’s highest faculty distinction — and remaining on leave until that time, a Harvard spokesperson confirmed to The Crimson.
Summers also resigned Wednesday from his role as co-director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at the Harvard Kennedy School, a position he has held since 2011, according to the spokesperson. He will not teach or take on new advisees.
The resignation marks an extraordinary unraveling for Summers, long one of the most influential figures in American economics. His career spanned prize-winning research, service as United States Treasury Secretary, and the presidency of Harvard.
In a statement to The Crimson, Summers wrote that the decision to leave was “difficult” and that he remained “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.”
“Free of formal responsibility, as President Emeritus and a retired professor, I look forward in time to engaging in research, analysis, and commentary on a range of global economic issues,” he added.
Summers’ standing began to collapse after a cache of emails disclosed in November revealed details of a long-standing personal relationship between Summers and convicted sex offender Jeffrey E. Epstein.
The correspondence revealed that Summers regularly exchanged messages with Epstein about women, politics, and Harvard-linked projects over at least seven years — staying in contact as late as July 2019, the day before Epstein’s final arrest.
The blowback was immediate and fierce. After the initial release of the emails, Summers said he would continue teaching. But as more correspondence was reviewed, he announced he would step back from public commitments and leave his teaching post. In the days that followed, Summers stepped down or parted ways with a slew of organizations, including the New York Times, Bloomberg, and OpenAI.
Shortly thereafter, the American Economic Association — the profession’s foremost academic organization — issued a lifetime ban against Summers.
In response to the revelations, Harvard launched a formal review of Summers’ ties to Epstein as part of a broader re-investigation into the University’s historical connections to the disgraced financier. The probe also encompasses other University affiliates and donors implicated in the documents.
In late December, a second tranche of Epstein-related records released by the Justice Department revealed that Summers had been designated as a successor executor in a 2014 draft of Epstein’s will, positioning him to oversee the financier’s estate if the primary executors were unable to serve. (A spokesperson for Summers told The Crimson at the time that Summers “had absolutely no knowledge that he was included in an early version of Epstein’s will.”)
The correspondence between Summers and Epstein — which tallies thousands of emails and phone calls — revealed an intimacy that far exceeded the bounds of a professional relationship. Across dozens of threads, Summers sought Epstein’s advice on personal matters, including his pursuit of a romantic relationship with a woman he described as a mentee.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
—Staff writer Hugo C. Chiasson can be reached at [email protected] or on Signal at hcc.35. Follow him on X @HugoChiassonn.
—Staff writer Elise A. Spenner can be reached at [email protected] or on Signal at elisespenner.82. Follow her on X @EliseSpenner.
