Ex-Harvard president Larry Summers stops teaching while university investigates Epstein emails

Harvard University professor Larry Summers is taking leave while the school investigates his and others’ ties with late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, a spokesperson confirmed.

The former US treasury secretary and onetime Harvard president will stop teaching and step back as director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at the Harvard Kennedy School.

A spokesperson told the BBC’s US partner, CBS News, that Summers believes “it’s in the best interest of the Center”.

Recently released emails indicate that Summers corresponded with Epstein until the day before the financier’s 2019 arrest for the alleged sex trafficking of minors.

In a statement to The Harvard Crimson, the university said it was “conducting a review of information concerning individuals at Harvard included in the newly released Jeffrey Epstein documents”.

The BBC has contacted Summers for comment on Harvard’s new review.

On Tuesday, Summers addressed his communication with Epstein to students in a class he had been teaching at Harvard.

“Some of you will have seen my statement of regret, expressing my shame with respect to what I did in communication with Mr. Epstein. And that I’ve said that I’m going to step back from public activity,” Summers told his students, according to a video recorded by a student.

“I think it’s very important to fulfill my teaching obligations. So with your permission, we’re going to go forward and talk about the material in the class.”

But on Wednesday night, Summers spokesperson Steven Goldberg said in the statement provided to CBS that “co-teachers will complete the remaining three class sessions of the courses he has been teaching with them this semester, and he is not scheduled to teach next semester”.

The public fallout for Summers began after Congress released over 20,000 pages of documents from the so-called Epstein files last week, which included multiple emails between Epstein and Summers.

Time stamps from the emails showed the two communicated up until the day before Epstein’s arrest – a decade after he pleaded guilty for soliciting prostitution from an underage girl.

A married father of six, Summers messaged Epstein in November 2018 seemingly asking for romantic advice related to his interest in someone he said viewed him as an “economics mentor”.

“Think for now I’m going nowhere with her except economics mentor,” Summers wrote in one exchange where Epstein referred to himself as Summers’ “wing man”.

“Am I thanking her or being sorry re my being married. I think the former,” he wrote in another email.

The emails also indicated that Summers and Epstein dined together frequently, with Epstein often trying to connect Summers to prominent global figures.

No Epstein survivor has accused Summers of misconduct, and there is no publicly available evidence indicating that he was involved in any of Epstein’s crimes.

Summers announced earlier Wednesday that he was leaving the board of OpenAI, and the artificial intelligence company said it respected Summers’ decision to resign.

“We appreciate his many contributions and the perspective he brought to the Board,” OpenAI said.

He joined the board of OpenAI, which makes ChatGPT, in 2023 – following a failed attempt to oust its chief executive, Sam Altman.

Summers said in a statement to the BBC about the move that he was “grateful for the opportunity to have served, excited about the potential of the company, and look forward to following their progress”.

After the emails were shared with the public, Summers said he took “full responsibility for my misguided decision to continue communicating with Mr Epstein”.

He added that he wanted “to rebuild trust and repair relationships with the people closest to me”.

Summers held senior posts under two Democratic presidents; serving as treasury secretary under Bill Clinton, and as director of the National Economic Council under Barack Obama. He led Harvard from 2001 to 2006 and remains a professor there.

The Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank in Washington where Summers was a senior fellow, also has confirmed that Summers is no longer affiliated with the organisation.

Both chambers of Congress agreed on Tuesday to pass a measure to require the US justice department to release its files on Epstein, setting up the possible release of tens-of-thousands more documents.

President Donald Trump signed the bill on Wednesday, after reversing his position on the issue following pushback from his supporters.