Larry Summers Resigning From Harvard After Revelation of Cozy Jeffrey Epstein Relationship

(Photo Credit: Michel Euler/AP photo)

Larry Summers is resigning from his faculty positions at Harvard at the end of the academic school year, months after emails showed the university’s former president sought relationship advice from late sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein.

The Harvard Crimson reported Summers would be leaving the school on Wednesday.

Here’s the key slice of that report:

Summers will resign from his academic and faculty appointments at Harvard at the end of the academic year, relinquishing his University Professorship — Harvard’s highest faculty distinction — and remaining on leave until that time, a Harvard spokesperson confirmed to The Crimson.

Summers also 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, according to the spokesperson. He will not teach or take on new advisees.

Summers said it was a “difficult” decision in a statement to the campus paper. He added 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.”

His announced exit comes after the release of Epstein-related files in November 2025 showed Summers asking Epstein for pointers in 2018 and 2019 on how to pursue a protege. The email exchanges came a decade after Epstein pleaded guilty to soliciting a minor.

“Think no response for a while probably appropriate,” Summers wrote to Epstein in 2018 after forwarding him an email from the woman. The Crimson reported that the woman in question appears to be Keyu Jin, a 2004 Harvard graduate who was then a professor at the London School of Economics.

“She’s already begining [sic] to sound needy :) nice,” Epstein responded.

In 2019, Summers wrote, “Tone was not of good feeling. I dint [sic] want to be in a gift giving competition while being the friend without benefits.”

“Shes smart. making you pay for past errors,” Epstein replied. “ignore the daddy im going to go out with the motorcycle guy, you reacted well.. annoyed shows caring., no whining showed strentgh [sic].”

Summers said he was “deeply ashamed” following the release of those messages. He was Harvard’s president from 2001 to 2006, after serving as Bill Clinton’s treasury secretary; he later served as Barack Obama’s National Economic Council director before returning to Harvard.

He was captured on video by one student last November saying he was ashamed of his connection to Epstein but that he was going to “fulfill my teaching obligations.”

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