Larry Summers to Resign From Harvard Teaching Appointments Amid Epstein-Related Review
larry summers will resign from his academic and faculty appointments at Harvard at the end of the academic year, relinquishing his University Professorship and remaining on leave until that time, a Harvard spokesperson said; the decision follows revelations in recently released documents tied to Jeffrey Epstein.
Larry Summers to leave Harvard roles at end of academic year
Summers resigned Wednesday 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, and he will not teach or take on new advisees, the spokesperson said. He will remain on leave through the end of the academic year and relinquish Harvard’s highest faculty distinction, the University Professorship.
Statement and career anchors
, Summers called the decision "difficult" and said he was "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. " Summers’s career includes prize-winning research, service as United States Treasury Secretary, and the presidency of Harvard from 2001 to 2006.
Emails show years of contact with Jeffrey Epstein
The move follows the disclosure of a cache of emails in November that revealed a long-standing personal relationship between Summers and convicted sex offender Jeffrey E. Epstein. The correspondence showed Summers regularly exchanged messages with Epstein about women, politics, and Harvard-linked projects over at least seven years, with contact continuing as late as July 2019, the day before Epstein’s final arrest.
The correspondence between Summers and Epstein — which tallies thousands of e... unclear in the provided context.
Institutional and professional fallout
After the initial release of emails, Summers said he would continue teaching; as more messages were reviewed, he stepped back from public commitments and announced he would leave his teaching post. In the days that followed he stepped down or parted ways with,, and OpenAI. The American Economic Association later imposed a lifetime ban against Summers.
Harvard review, executor designation and historical ties
Harvard launched a formal review of Summers’s ties to Epstein as part of a broader reinvestigation into the University’s historical connections with the financier; the probe also covers other University affiliates and donors implicated in the documents. In late December, a second tranche of Epstein-related records released by the Justice Department showed Summers had been designated as a successor executor in a 2014 draft of Epstein’s will. A spokesperson for Summers said at the time that Summers "had absolutely no knowledge that he was included in an early version of Epstein's will. "
The broader record cited in the review notes that Epstein donated more than $9 million to Harvard and its affiliated programs between 1998 and 2008, overlapping Summers’s tenure as president, and that Epstein was appointed a visiting fellow 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.
Other resignations and linked headlines
The most recent releases also prompted other moves: Nobel laureate Richard Axel of Columbia University’s Brain Institute said he would resign; Bill Gates apologized to staff at his foundation and insisted he did not participate in Epstein’s crimes and denies doing anything illicit; none of the men mentioned have been charged with any crimes. Additional headlines on the university page included: "Jeffrey Epstein, Gerald Chan Coordinated on Proposed Tsinghua University Campus in Boston"; "Harvard Faculty Cut A Grades by Nearly 7 Percentage Points in Fall"; "Seven Harvard Affiliates Named 2027 Schwarzman Scholars"; "Public Health Faculty Slam Harvard’s Removal of FXB Center Director Mary Bassett"; and "A Double-Edged Sword? Double Concentrations Create Both Pressure and Opportunity for Harvard Students. "
Broader news items carried with the files
The recent news coverage bundled other international and domestic items: rescue teams in Brazil were searching for dozens of people after intense rains and floods that killed at least 46 people, with bodies retrieved from debris and thick mud and at least 3, 000 residents forced to evacuate as of this morning; mourners gathered for the funeral of an 11-year-old killed in the floods. Cuba’s Interior Ministry said soldiers killed four people aboard a speedboat registered in Florida that they say had opened fire in Cuban waters. In the northeastern United States, forecasters expected another one to three inches of snow, the National Weather Service warned drivers in New Jersey about snow and black ice, New York streets were mostly clear after officials used salt and hired emergency shovelers, and power was being restored for hundreds of thousands in Delaware, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. A U. S. official, Marco Rubio, defended the Trump administration’s capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro today.
Summers first announced in November 2025 that he would stop teaching while the school conducted its investigation; the spokesperson Jason Newton said the resignation comes "in connection with the ongoing review by the University of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein that were recently released by the government. "
Harvard will continue its review of the documents and Summers will remain on leave until the end of the academic year; details about specific next steps in the university’s review and any additional institutional actions were not specified in the provided context.
