Larry Summers stated Monday night time that he was “deeply ashamed” about his relationship with the convicted intercourse offender Jeffrey Epstein, telling NCS that he would pause all public engagements as he works to “rebuild trust and repair relationships” — however the Harvard University professor added that he will proceed educating as some name for the college to sever ties with him.
“I am deeply ashamed of my actions and recognize the pain they have caused. I take full responsibility for my misguided decision to continue communicating with Mr. Epstein,” Summers stated. “While continuing to fulfill my teaching obligations, I will be stepping back from public commitments as one part of my broader effort to rebuild trust and repair relationships with the people closest to me.”
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 in search of Epstein’s romantic recommendation.
Summers’ first assertion addressing the newly unveiled Epstein correspondence comes on the heels of Sen. Elizabeth Warren calling on Harvard to sever ties with Summers and placing new strain on the elite college to carry Summers accountable for his shut friendship with Epstein.
Warren, a former Harvard Law School professor and now the Democratic senior senator from Massachusetts, had stated in response to a NCS inquiry that she believes Summers — Harvard’s former president and one in every of its most distinguished college members — “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.”
Harvard has not responded to NCS’s requests for remark.
A spokesperson for the Center for American Progress, the left-leaning suppose tank the place Summers has been a senior fellow, stated Monday night time after Summers’ assertion: “Larry Summers has announced that he is stepping away from public commitments immediately, and this includes ending his fellowship at CAP.”
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 prior to now.
But her new name on policymakers and establishments to shun Summers represented a good sharper critique of his character.
Summers resigned as Harvard’s president in 2006 below strain amid a number of controversies, together with his suggestion that males could 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 acquired from the Epstein property. Included within the current trove had been quite a few exchanges between Summers and Epstein between no 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 regularly bantered about present occasions, political headlines and high-profile figures in elite orbits — all the things from Iran’s nuclear coverage to Donald Trump’s first-term selections within the White House.
At different instances, the 2 males appeared to debate Summers’ romantic endeavors, with Epstein providing recommendation.
In November 2018, for instance, Summers appeared to ahead an electronic mail from a girl to solicit Epstein’s recommendation on when to jot down again.
“Think no response for a while probably appropriate,” Summers wrote. (He occurred to ask in the identical electronic 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 girl of romantic curiosity. Summers’ continued contact with Epstein during this period was significantly noteworthy as a result of the Miami Herald printed simply months prior an exhaustive investigative series detailing Epstein’s abuse of underage ladies, 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 check the state of affairs to Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey.
And in a single October 2017 electronic 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.”
Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on September 4, 2025. – Shannon Stapleton/Reuters
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 college’s scholar 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 somewhat a “character flaw.”
Trump stated after the discharge of the most recent batch of Epstein recordsdata, which included quite a few feedback and discussions in regards to the president, that he is asking his attorney general, Pam Bondi, to analyze Epstein’s ties to high-profile figures and establishments. Among these Trump singled out had been Summers, Clinton and JPMorgan Chase.
The Economic Club of New York introduced Monday that it postponed an upcoming occasion that includes Summers, in keeping with an electronic mail obtained by NCS.
The virtual event, scheduled for Wednesday, was billed as a dialogue about “the future of fiscal and monetary policy,” with Summers and an economics professor from Columbia University. But the membership stated in an electronic mail to registered attendees that there had been an “unavoidable change in schedule,” spurring the postponement.
Asked by NCS if the postponement was influenced by the Epstein revelations, a membership spokeswoman reiterated that it was “due to an unavoidable change in schedule.”
This story has been up to date with further developments.
NCS’s Marshall Cohen contributed to this report.
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