Eliot University Professor Lawrence H. Summers is taking a leave from teaching duties, the University confirmed this week, as the Harvard administration opens an investigation into Summers’s and other affiliates’ relationships with convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The investigation follows the release of emails by a House of Representatives committee last week showing that Epstein remained a close confidant of the former Harvard president long after Epstein’s initial conviction as a child sex offender in 2008. Up until 2019, when Epstein was arrested for a second time on federal human trafficking charges, the pair discussed subjects ranging from politics to fundraising for Summers’s wife’s poetry program to Summers’s pursuit of a relationship with an unnamed woman described as his mentee.
In an official statement, a Harvard spokesperson said “The University is conducting a review of information concerning individuals at Harvard included in the newly released Jeffrey Epstein documents to evaluate what actions may be warranted.”
This week, Congress passed legislation—signed on Wednesday by U.S. President Donald Trump—calling on the Department of Justice to release its files on Epstein within the next 30 days.
Summers, who served as the U.S. secretary of the treasury from 1999 to 2001, was president of Harvard from 2001 until his resignation in 2006.
Harvard’s previous investigation into Epstein’s history as a donor to the University, published as an official report in 2020, enumerated several instances in which Epstein brokered major gifts to Harvard. The report, prepared by Harvard attorneys working with outside counsel, found that Harvard had not accepted any gifts from Epstein following his 2008 conviction in Florida for procuring a child for prostitution and soliciting a prostitute.
Unspent funds given by Epstein to the University—totaling $200,937—were donated in 2020 to organizations that support victims of human trafficking and sexual assault.
In 2021, acting on information detailed in the report, Claudine Gay, then the dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, took further action, sanctioning professor of mathematics and biology Martin Nowak for having maintained ties to Epstein after his Florida conviction.
The 2020 report did not mention Epstein’s apparent role in soliciting a donation sometime in 2014 or 2015 for a poetry project helmed by Summers’s wife, Cabot professor of American literature emerita Elisa New. (The report did mention a 2016 gift from one of Epstein’s foundations directly to a foundation headed by New, noting that this was not a donation to Harvard.)
Epstein’s involvement in that donation to New’s project at Harvard represents new information laid out for the first time in the recently released Epstein correspondence.
Summers apologized for his ongoing relationship with Epstein in a statement shared with The Crimson and other news outlets on Monday, following the release of more than 20,000 Epstein emails by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
“I am deeply ashamed of my actions and recognize the pain they have caused,” Summers said, according to the statement, which was published in numerous news outlets. “I take full responsibility for my misguided decision to continue communicating with Mr. Epstein. While continuing to fulfill 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.”
In subsequent days, Summers faced calls for his resignation from Harvard by U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, among others—along with commentary noting that his emails did not suggest the commission of a crime.
Summers taught a class in the Science Center on Tuesday, according to a video posted on YouTube. But on Wednesday, a spokesperson for Summers indicated that Summers would step away from his Harvard duties as well. Summers had by then “decided it’s in the best interest of the [Mossavar Rahmani] Center [for Business and Government] for him to go on leave from his role as Director as Harvard undertakes its review,” the spokesperson wrote in an email to Harvard Magazine. “His 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.”
As part of his retreat from public life, Summers has, according to The New York Times, resigned from the board of OpenAI and will no longer be affiliated with the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank; the Peterson Institute for International Economics; the Yale Budget Lab; Bloomberg News (where he has been a paid commentator); The New York Times (where he has a contract as an opinion writer that runs through the end of 2025); and the Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project.
