Larry Summers to resign from Harvard after Epstein files revelations

Larry Summers, former president of Harvard University, will resign from teaching at the end of the academic year, a spokesperson confirmed to the Guardian.The news of his formal resignation comes “in connection with the ongoing review by the University of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein that were recently released by the government”, a Harvard spokesperson, Jason Newton, said in a statement.Summers also resigned from his role as co-director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at the Harvard Kennedy School, a position he has held since 2011, according to the spokesperson. He will remain on leave until the end of the academic year. The news was first reported by the Harvard Crimson, the student newspaper.Summers, a renowned economist and former US treasury secretary, announced in November 2025 that he would stop teaching while the school conducted its investigation. In a statement shared with the Guardian, Summers acknowledged that the decision to leave was “difficult”.“I will always be grateful to the thousands of students and colleagues I have been privileged to teach and work with since coming to Harvard as a graduate student 50 years ago,” he added.“Free of formal responsibility, as President Emeritus and a retired professor, I look forward in time to engaging in research, analysis and commentary on a range of global economic issues.”Emails that were released by the US House oversight committee in 2025 reignited questions about Summers’s relationship with Epstein, who died in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal charges of sex-trafficking minors. Many of the messages indicated a friendship that lasted well into 2019. Contact only ended shortly before Epstein was arrested in July of that same year. Scrutiny on Summers, who was was once prominent voice in Democratic circles, has intensified over recent months. In addition to serving as treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, he also was director of the White House national economic council (NEC) from January 2009 until November 2010, where he guided the Obama administration through the aftermath of the 2008 economic crisis.In the emails, Summers and Epstein muse on everything from politics and philanthropic endeavors to women. Summers, 71, confided in Epstein about pursuing a romantic relationship with someone who viewed him as an “economic mentor”.In one message from 2018, Epstein refers to himself as Summers’s “wingman”. He also gives the economist advice in a 2019 exchange about his romantic gestures being rebuffed.Summers served as Harvard’s president from 2001 to 2006. Epstein donated more than $9m to Harvard and its affiliated programs between 1998 and 2008, which overlapped with Summers’s tenure. Epstein was also appointed a visiting fellow to conduct research in the university’s department of psychology. The university later concluded Epstein “lacked the academic qualifications visiting fellows typically possess and his application proposed a course of study Epstein was unqualified to pursue”.Harvard stopped accepting Epstein’s donations after he pleaded guilty to child sex offenses in 2008.