Larry Summers Steps Aside from Harvard as Epstein Email Fallout Deepens

Summers, 70, a former U.S. treasury secretary and onetime candidate to lead the Federal Reserve, had already begun withdrawing from public life after the email was published. But his decision to take a break from teaching at the university of which he was once president was particularly notable for someone who was a prominent and sometimes controversial figure in Washington and academia.

Here’s what you need to know about Summers.

Newly released emails reveal ties to Epstein Emails made public last week showed that many people in Epstein’s network of friends, including Summers, remained in touch even after the 2008 criminal complaint. In an email sent to Epstein in 2019, Summers appears to talk about interactions he had with a woman, writing: “I said, ‘What are you doing? He said, ‘I’m busy.’ I said he was very shy.”

Writing with frequent spelling and grammatical errors, Epstein responded: “You responded well. Being angry shows you care. No whining seemed strong.”

When asked about the emails last week, Summers released a statement saying he had “huge regrets in my life” and that his relationship with Epstein was a “massive error of judgment.”

In 2019, Epstein killed himself in a Manhattan jail while awaiting trial on charges of sexually abusing and trafficking underage girls.

President Donald Trump, who has also faced questions about his relationship with Epstein, has asked the Justice Department and FBI to investigate Summers and other prominent Democrats, including former President Bill Clinton and donor Reid Hoffman, for their ties to Epstein. U.S. Attorney Pam Bondi said she ordered a top federal prosecutor to lead the investigation, several months after her department said it had no basis for further investigation into Epstein’s associates.

Following last week’s email, Summers’ office announced that Summers would resign from the board of OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT. Representatives of the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank, and the Budget Lab at Yale also confirmed that Summers is no longer affiliated with their organizations.

Summers was a top economic adviser during the Clinton administration. By the time Clinton moved into the White House in 1993, Summers was already well known in economic circles. At 28, he was one of the youngest academics to earn tenure at Harvard, and he went on to hold a senior post at the World Bank.

But his national profile rose when he held senior positions at the Treasury Department during the Clinton administration. As deputy Treasury secretary, he was a key figure in U.S. efforts to contain the financial crisis spreading across Asia. This spurred him to appear on the cover of Time magazine alongside then-Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. The trio was famously named the Committee to Save the World, reflecting the mood surrounding many US economic leaders at the time.

Summers was Clinton’s last treasury secretary at a time when deregulation excitement was sweeping both parties in Washington. He was among Democrats who supported legislation that would erase or erode many of the financial regulations that have governed Wall Street since the Great Depression; This situation would later put Summers in a difficult situation.

With Democrats out of the White House, Summers returned to Harvard as the university’s president in 2001. His tenure was defined by turmoil, especially after he spoke at a conference in 2005 on increasing diversity in science and engineering. She suggested that women were underrepresented in these fields due to “inherent talent”.

The comments were derided as sexist. Summers resigned as Harvard president at the end of the 2006 academic year due to disagreements with faculty and the negative impact of comments about women.

When Summers returned to Washington in 2009, the United States was in the midst of the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression. President Barack Obama appointed him director of the National Economic Council. But many Democrats were skeptical of Summers, especially those from the party’s emerging progressive wing, who accused Summers of helping create financial instability. They argued that he was among those who supported deregulation legislation that eliminated many of the barriers to the banking system.

Even Clinton told ABC News in 2010 that she thought Summers and Rubin were wrong to encourage her to oppose regulating derivatives as she took responsibility for signing deregulation legislation. Complex financial instruments have been blamed for contributing to financial instability.

Summers remained close to Obama, who thought he would replace Ben Bernanke as Fed chairman. But comments about women and criticism of his role in financial deregulation were too much to handle in the Senate, where it was clear he would not be confirmed. Summers withdrew from consideration, and Obama ultimately nominated Janet Yellen to be the central bank’s first female leader.