Larry Summers announces Harvard retirement as Epstein email disclosures trigger investigations, resignations, and widening Ivy League consequences.
Larry Summers has announced he would retire from teaching at Harvard University at the end of the current academic year, as continued fallout from his past association with Jeffrey Epstein intensifies.
Summers, who previously served as US Treasury secretary and president of Harvard, said he has made the “difficult decision” to step down after 50 years at the university, where he first arrived as a graduate student. He stated that he remains grateful to students and colleagues and plans to focus on research and commentary on global economic issues once retired.
His resignation comes three months after he took leave from Harvard amid controversy surrounding the release of emails detailing his communications with Epstein. The emails, disclosed by the Department of Justice and Congress, prompt an internal review by the university. Summers is not accused of wrongdoing related to Epstein, but he says in November that he is “deeply ashamed” of continuing to communicate with him and acknowledged the pain caused by that decision.
Harvard confirmed that Kennedy School Dean Jeremy Weinstein accepts Summers’ resignation as co-director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government in connection with the ongoing document review. A university spokesperson stated that Summers will remain on leave and will not teach classes or take on new advisees before his retirement becomes effective.
The controversy also leads Summers to resign from the board of artificial intelligence company OpenAI.
Scrutiny extends beyond Harvard. At Columbia University, Nobel Prize-winning scientist Richard Axel announced he is stepping down as co-director of the Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute following attention to his own communications with Epstein. Meanwhile, Yale University said professor David Gelernter is barred from teaching computer science classes pending a review of his contacts, which include mentioning a Yale student for a potential project.
Epstein died by suicide in a New York federal jail in 2019, weeks after his arrest on child sex trafficking charges, and newly released records detailing his connections continued to generate professional and institutional consequences.
