Sen. Elizabeth Warren stated Harvard University ought to sever ties with Larry Summers, the college’s former president and one among its most outstanding college members — placing new strain on the elite college to maintain Summers accountable for his intimate friendship with convicted intercourse offender Jeffrey Epstein.
New particulars of Summers’ relationship with Epstein emerged final week when a House committee released emails exhibiting years of private correspondence between the 2 males, together with Summers making sexist feedback and searching for Epstein’s romantic recommendation.
Warren, a former Harvard Law School professor and now the Democratic senior senator from Massachusetts, stated in response to a NCS inquiry that she believes Summers “cannot be trusted” with college students given his previous relationship with Epstein.
“For decades, Larry Summers has demonstrated his attraction to serving the wealthy and well-connected, but his willingness to cozy up to a convicted sex offender demonstrates monumentally bad judgment,” Warren informed NCS. “If he had so little ability to distance himself from Jeffrey Epstein even after all that was publicly known about Epstein’s sex offenses involving underage girls, then Summers cannot be trusted to advise our nation’s politicians, policymakers, and institutions — or teach a generation of students at Harvard or anywhere else.”
NCS has reached out to Summers and Harvard for remark. Summers has beforehand stated he regrets his previous affiliation with Epstein.
Summers served as Bill Clinton’s Treasury secretary and Barack Obama’s director of the National Economic Council and has been one of many nation’s most influential financial voices for many years. Warren, an financial populist, has clashed with Summers over financial regulations previously.
But her new name on policymakers and establishments to shun Summers represents an excellent sharper critique of his character.
A spokesperson for the Center for American Progress, the left-leaning assume tank the place Summers is a senior fellow, stated in a press release to NCS: “Larry Summers is a non-resident, uncompensated fellow at CAP. We are reviewing last week’s disclosures to determine appropriate next steps.”
Summers resigned as Harvard’s president in 2006 underneath strain amid a number of controversies, together with his suggestion that males might carry out higher within the sciences due to genetic variations from girls. He currently serves because the Charles W. Eliot University Professor at Harvard.
The House Oversight Committee launched tens of thousands of pages of paperwork on Wednesday that it obtained from the Epstein property. Included within the latest trove had been quite a few exchanges between Summers and Epstein between not less than 2013 and 2019. Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to state fees in Florida of 1 rely of solicitation of prostitution and one rely of solicitation of prostitution with a minor.
The messages present the 2 males ceaselessly bantered about present occasions, political headlines and high-profile figures in elite orbits — the whole lot from Iran’s nuclear coverage to Donald Trump’s first-term selections within the White House.
At different occasions, the 2 males appeared to focus on Summers’ romantic endeavors, with Epstein providing recommendation.
In November 2018, for instance, Summers appeared to ahead an e-mail from a lady to solicit Epstein’s recommendation on when to write again.
“Think no response for a while probably appropriate,” Summers wrote. (He occurred to ask in the identical e-mail whether or not Epstein believed Trump was “getting crazier” or was “steady crazy.”)
Epstein wrote again partly: “she’s already beginning to sound needy 🙂 nice.”
In March 2019, the 2 males exchanged a number of emails over the course of 1 morning, showing to debate whether or not Summers ought to ship a be aware to a lady of romantic curiosity. Summers’ continued contact with Epstein during this period was notably noteworthy as a result of the Miami Herald revealed simply months prior an exhaustive investigative series detailing Epstein’s abuse of underage women, and uncovered what the paper known as “the deal of a lifetime” that he negotiated in 2007 and 2008 to keep away from federal fees.
Sending a be aware can be “BAD FORM,” Epstein argued to Summers.
“Why bad form. Supposed to be face to face?” Summers wrote again.
“you care very much for this person. You might want to demonstrate that. a note does the very opposite,” Epstein wrote again, earlier than showing to examine the scenario to Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey.
And in a single October 2017 e-mail to Epstein, Summers mused: “I observed that half the IQ In world was possessed by women without mentioning they are more than 51 percent of population.”
Summers’ spouse, Elisa New, is a professor emerita of American literature at Harvard. The Wall Street Journal previously reported that Summers had requested Epstein to donate cash to his spouse’s nonprofit. The faculty’s pupil paper, The Harvard Crimson, reported on the outrage amongst some professors in regards to the emails between Summers and Epstein. Rachel McCleary, a lecturer within the economics division, the place Summers nonetheless teaches, informed The Crimson his relationship with Epstein was not “just one lapse” however moderately a “character flaw.”
Trump stated after the discharge of the newest batch of Epstein information, which included quite a few feedback and discussions in regards to the president, that he’s asking his attorney general, Pam Bondi, to examine Epstein’s ties to high-profile figures and establishments. Among these Trump singled out included Summers, Clinton and JPMorgan Chase.