Harvard professor Larry Summers’ disgusting emails with Jeffrey Epstein have finally cost him his position at the university.
Summers, 71, will resign at the end of the academic year, Harvard spokesman Jason Newton tells The New York Times. He will also step down as co-director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government—a role he has held since 2011.
The long-awaited resignation comes “in connection with the ongoing review by the university of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein that were recently released by the government,” Newton said in a statement.
Summers has been on leave since November. He initially attempted to continue teaching despite significant backlash to the release of emails that showed him discussing his pursuit of a mentee and using racial slurs with Epstein.
Those emails, first uncovered by the Harvard Crimson, found that Summers remained friends with Epstein long after the disgraced financier’s 2008 conviction for soliciting prostitution from a minor—and right up to the day before Epstein’s 2019 arrest for child sex trafficking.
Emails from Summers seeking Epstein’s advice on how to win over a mentee, as well as his complaints about professional repercussions for making romantic advances to coworkers, were among the most scrutinized.
Epstein described himself as the “wingman” to the married Summers, while the Harvard man whined about the repercussions men face if they “hit on a few women 10 years ago.”
Summers was married to Victoria Perry from 1984-2003, with whom he had three children, twin daughters Pamela and Ruth, and a son, Harry. In 2005, he married his second wife, Elisa New, who is also a Harvard professor, becoming stepfather to her three children, Yael, Orli, and Maya.
While discussing a Chinese student in another email, Summers referred to her as “peril,” which critics say was a reference to the racist slur “Yellow Peril.” In follow-up emails about the student, Epstein described her as “needy” and urged Summers to play the “long game.”
Epstein wrote that the woman “is doomed to be with you” and later joked that the chance of Summers “in bed again with peril” is “0.” Grossly, he then reassured his professor pal that “she is never ever going to find another Larry Summers.”
Summers, who was a Treasury secretary under Bill Clinton and once led Barack Obama’s National Economic Council, was even written into Epstein’s will, a Financial Times report revealed in December.
Summers told the Crimson that it was a “difficult decision” to resign. However, he hinted that he is not totally leaving the public eye.
“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 in a statement.
