Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers has announced that he will retire from teaching at Harvard University at the end of the academic year, amid renewed scrutiny over his ties to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Summers said in a statement on Wednesday (25 February): “I have made the difficult decision to retire from my Harvard professorship at the end of this academic year.”
The renewed attention follows the release of documents by the U.S. House Oversight Committee, which include personal correspondence between Epstein and several high-profile figures.
Summers, who also served as president of Harvard, has faced criticism over his past association with Epstein. The exchanges between the two included hundreds of emails over several years, in which they discussed a range of personal, professional and political matters.
The correspondence included Summers asking Epstein for romantic advice and referring to time they had spent together. It continued until 5 July 2019, one day before Epstein’s arrest on federal sex-trafficking charges, despite Epstein’s earlier conviction in 2008.
No allegations of criminal wrongdoing have been made against Summers.
In November, he paused his teaching duties and took leave from his role as co-director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at the Harvard Kennedy School while the university conducted a review of individuals named in the Epstein files.
A Harvard spokesperson, Jason Newton, said Summers’ resignation from the leadership post had been accepted and that he would remain on leave until formally retiring at the end of the academic year.
Summers also stepped down from the board of OpenAI in November following the announcement of the review. At the time, he said he was “deeply ashamed” of his connections with Epstein and would step back from public commitments to “repair relationships with the people closest to me.”
A Democrat, Summers served as Treasury Secretary under former President Bill Clinton and as director of the National Economic Council under former President Barack Obama. His decision to retire comes as Harvard continues to examine links between faculty members and Epstein.
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