Lawrence Summers resigns from teaching at Harvard over ties to Jeffrey Epstein
The decision by the former Treasury secretary and former university president follows a review that showed the nature of his relationship with the convicted sex offender.
Lawrence Summers will resign from his academic and faculty appointments at Harvard University at the end of this academic year because of his connections to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, a spokesman for the university said Wednesday.
Summers, a former U.S. treasury secretary and former president of Harvard, was the latest prominent figure to resign amid ongoing revelations about Epstein’s network. Summers has resigned from his leadership role at the Harvard Kennedy School, where he was co-director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government. That resignation is effective immediately.
Harvard Kennedy School Dean Jeremy Weinstein has accepted Summers’s resignation “in connection with the ongoing review by the University of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein that were recently released by the government,” said Jason Newton, a spokesman for Harvard.
Summers, an influential figure in economic policymaking, had already stepped back from many of his public roles in the fall after the House Oversight Committee released documents revealing Epstein’s ties to many powerful figures. Summers’s connection to Epstein was revealed to be much closer than previously had been known, with numerous email exchanges between the two men over a period of years. The men had discussed a range of topics, including health, travel, politics and Summers’s romantic interests, with Epstein offering advice, documents showed.
In one 2019 exchange, Summers said a woman was giving him a signal of not wanting any affectionate talk. Epstein wrote: “It will definitely take a face-to-face to figure out, hopefully horizontal”.
Summers said last fall that he was “deeply ashamed” of his actions and the pain they had caused. Meanwhile, the university launched another investigation into school affiliates’ ties to the disgraced financier, who had donated to universities, including Harvard, before a 2008 guilty plea for soliciting prostitution of a minor.
Over the years, Epstein cultivated relationships with prominent academics and promoted himself as a science philanthropist.
After Drew Faust became president of Harvard in 2007, she decided the school would no longer accept gifts from him.
Epstein, who did not have an undergraduate degree, had an office at Harvard between 2010 and 2018, where he met with professors.
In 2019, Epstein was arrested on new federal charges of sexually abusing dozens of girls in the early 2000s, and he was later found dead in federal custody. That year, Harvard officials said that the school had accepted about $9 million in donations from Epstein between 1998 and 2007.
Last fall, the release of messages between Epstein and Summers revealed a much closer friendship than had previously been widely known — and prompted numerous organizations to cut ties with Summers.
Summers and his wife briefly visited Epstein’s private island in 2005 during their honeymoon.
Summers was president of Harvard from 2001 to 2006, when he resigned after controversies, including suggesting in a 2005 speech that “issues of intrinsic aptitude” could explain why there are fewer female scientists.
On Wednesday, Summers said that he had made the “difficult decision” to retire from his Harvard professorship at the end of the academic year.
“I 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,” he said in a written statement. “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.”
His resignation was first reported by the Harvard Crimson, which also reported that a math professor, Martin Nowak, had been placed on paid administrative leave as the school investigates his ties to Epstein. A school spokesman confirmed the action involving Nowak on Wednesday. Nowak did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
