Former US Treasury chief Larry Summers quits Harvard over Epstein ties

Summers, who also previously served as Harvard’s president, was revealed in the Epstein files to have had extensive exchanges with the convicted sex offender

Former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers will resign from teaching at Harvard University amid a campus review of his ties to Jeffrey Epstein, the university announced Wednesday.

Summers, who has been on leave since November and whose name appeared hundreds of times in newly released files about the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender, will leave at the end of the school year, according to a statement from Harvard spokesperson Jason Newton.

“Professor Summers has announced that he will retire from his academic and faculty appointments at Harvard at the end of this academic year and will remain on leave until that time,” Newton said.

In his own statement, Summers said it was a difficult decision and expressed gratitude to the students and colleagues he worked with over the course of 50 years.

“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,” Summers said.

Summers, who ran the US Treasury under former US president Bill Clinton, was revealed in the Epstein files released by the US Department of Justice to have had extensive exchanges with Epstein, whose death in prison in 2019 was ruled a suicide.

Clinton will testify before a congressional committee on his own ties to Epstein on Friday while his wife, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, will appear Thursday.

After serving as treasury secretary, Summers went on to lead Harvard as president for five years starting in 2001.

In November, Harvard reopened an investigation into connections between Summers and Epstein. The same day, Summers’s office said he would resign from the board of OpenAI, the tech giant that runs ChatGPT.

The university did not mention Summers by name at the time, but the decision to restart the probe followed the release of emails showing that Summers maintained a friendly relationship with Epstein long after the financier pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution from an underage girl in 2008.

That month, a clip of Summers addressing the matter while teaching a class at Harvard went viral. He said that month that he was “stepping back” from public commitments as well as classroom duties.

“You will have seen my statement of regret expressing my shame with respect to what I did in communication with Mr. Epstein,” he said in the footage.

In a statement to US media, he said, “I take full responsibility for my misguided decision to continue communicating with Mr. Epstein.”

Documents that were included in the US Justice Department release of files related to disgraced financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein are photographed on January 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Jon Elswick)

The mere mention of someone’s name in the Epstein files does not, in itself, imply any wrongdoing by that person. However, the documents made public show that Epstein cultivated a global network of powerful politicians, business executives, academics and celebrities — many of whom have been tainted by their association with him.

He had made $9.1 million in donations to Harvard University between 1998 and 2008, the institution said.

A number of prominent Americans — from the Clintons to US President Donald Trump to Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates — have had their reputations damaged by their friendships with Epstein, but no one other than Epstein’s ex-girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell has faced legal consequences in the United States.

In Britain, former prince Andrew and ex-diplomat Peter Mandelson were arrested because of their connections to Epstein and Maxwell. And resignations have rippled across the academic, legal and business communities.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.