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Summers called Epstein ‘very good wingman’
Former Harvard University President Larry Summers will step down from teaching position at the end of the academic year over his ties with convicted sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein.
He has also stepped down from his role as co-director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at Harvard Kennedy School and will remain on leave for the remainder of the school year, according to The Harvard Crimson.
Summers told The Crimson the decision was “difficult.” Still, he is “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.”
“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,” he said.
Epstein-related documents released by the Justice Department in December revealed that Summers had been named as a successor executor in a 2014 draft of Epstein’s will, meaning he would have been responsible for managing the financier’s estate if the primary executors could not serve, The Crimson reported.
Summers first apologized for his close relationship with Epstein in November, The College Fix reported.
At the time, he said he would continue teaching, but stepped away from the Center for American Progress and Yale’s Budget Lab research center.
In a 2018 email, Summers told Epstein he was a “very good wingman” and detailed his efforts to pursue a woman, according to Inside Higher Ed.
“I take full responsibility for my misguided decision to continue communicating with Mr. Epstein,” he said.
Summers and Epstein regularly messaged each other about women, politics, and Harvard-related projects for at least seven years, with their contact continuing as late as July 2019, just one day before Epstein’s final arrest, according to The Harvard Crimson.
But Summers is not the only Harvard faculty member with connections to Epstein.
Mathematics professor Martin Nowak is on paid administrative leave as of this week while Harvard launches a formal investigation into his past ties to the convicted sex offender, The Crimson reported.
In an email to Harvard staff, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Hopi Hoekstra announced the decision.
“New information about Professor Nowak has come to light as part of the University’s review of documents released by the U.S. Department of Justice regarding Jeffrey Epstein. A panel of the FAS Faculty Conduct Committee (FCC) reviewed this information and recommended that FAS conduct a formal investigation to determine whether Professor Nowak violated FAS or University policies and standards of professional conduct,” Hoekstra wrote.
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