Harvard professor and former US treasury secretary Larry Summers has announced he will step back from public life following the release of documents by the House oversight committee that revealed extensive email exchanges between him and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Summers, who served as treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton and later as president of Harvard University, expressed deep regret over his continued communications with Epstein. In a statement to Politico, he said: “I am deeply ashamed of my actions and recognise the pain they have caused. I take full responsibility for my misguided decision to continue communicating with Mr Epstein. While continuing to fulfil my teaching obligations, I will be stepping back from public commitments as one part of my broader effort to rebuild trust and repair relationships with the people closest to me.”
The fallout has been swift. The Center for American Progress confirmed that Summers will end his role as a distinguished senior fellow at the thinktank. Meanwhile, lawmakers from both parties have urged institutions to sever ties with him. Senator Elizabeth Warren told CNN that Summers should be held accountable for his years-long association with Epstein, describing his judgement as “monumentally bad”.
The tranche of emails released last week revealed that Epstein, despite his 2008 conviction for soliciting prostitution from an underage girl, maintained contact with a wide network of business executives, academics, journalists and political figures. Among them was Summers, who in one exchange was referred to by Epstein as his “wing man”.
Warren was scathing in her assessment: “For decades, Larry Summers has demonstrated his attraction to serving the wealthy and well-connected, but his willingness to cosy up to a convicted sex offender demonstrates monumentally bad judgment. If he had so little ability to distance himself from Jeffrey Epstein even after all that was publicly known about Epstein’s sex offences involving underage girls, then Summers cannot be trusted to advise our nation’s politicians, policymakers and institutions – or teach a generation of students at Harvard or anywhere else.”
A senior Trump administration official, speaking anonymously to Politico, echoed these concerns, questioning why Summers remained a contributor to Bloomberg News, a board member of OpenAI and a tenured professor at Harvard. “It’s shocking that Larry Summers remains a paid contributor to Bloomberg News, on the board of OpenAI and tenured at Harvard. What more revelations about him and his ‘wing man’ will it take for institutions to cut him loose? The British government immediately sacked their ambassador to the US over much less,” the official said.
Summers is now the subject of a new investigation ordered by President Donald Trump. The president instructed attorney general Pam Bondi to examine the involvement of several Democrats and institutions whose names appeared in the latest batch of documents. The emails also raised questions about whether Trump himself had knowledge of Epstein’s conduct.
The exchanges between Summers and Epstein, spanning from 2013 to early 2019, included discussions on politics, relationships and personal matters. In one 2017 email, Summers wrote: “I’m trying to figure why [the] American elite think if u murder your baby by beating and abandonment it must be irrelevant to your admission to Harvard. But hit on a few women 10 years ago and can’t work at a network or think tank. DO NOT REPEAT THIS INSIGHT.” He added: “I observed that half of the IQ in [the] world was possessed by women without mentioning they are more than 51% of population.”
Other emails showed Summers seeking Epstein’s advice on romantic matters. In November 2018, Summers forwarded an email from a woman and asked Epstein when he should reply. Epstein responded: “She’s already beginning to sound needy 🙂 nice.”
Summers reiterated his regret in a statement to the Harvard Crimson last week, writing: “I have great regrets in my life. As I have said before, my association with Jeffrey Epstein was a major error of judgment.”
The revelations have provoked outrage among Harvard faculty. Statistics professor Joseph K Blitzstein told the Crimson: “The cosy friendship between Epstein and Summers on display in the emails is disgusting and disgraceful.”
Summers’ relationship with Epstein had previously been reported by the Wall Street Journal in 2023, which noted that in 2014 Summers had sought Epstein’s advice on securing $1m in funding for his wife’s poetry project.
The latest disclosures have reignited debate over Summers’ judgement and his continued role in academia and public life. His decision to step back marks a significant moment in a career long associated with influence at the highest levels of government, finance and education.
