Epstein files: Larry Summers to resign as Harvard professor, reports say - CNBC

Larry Summers, the former U.S. Treasury secretary who has been dogged by his past friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, announced Wednesday that he will resign from teaching at Harvard University by the end of the current academic year.

Summers previously served as president of Harvard.

His resignation came as the university was conducting a review of emails and other documents detailing Summers' connection to Epstein, which were released in recent months by the Department of Justice and Congress.

"I have made the difficult decision to retire from my Harvard professorship at the end of this academic year," Summers said in a statement obtained by CNBC. "I will always be 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."

"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.

Summers, who went on leave from Harvard in November because of fallout from those emails, has not been accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein. He will not teach or take on new advisees until his retirement is effective.

"In connection with the ongoing review by the University of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein that were recently released by the government, Harvard Kennedy School Dean Jeremy Weinstein has accepted Professor Lawrence H. Summers' resignation from his leadership position as co-director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government," Harvard spokesman Jason Newton told CNBC in a statement on Wednesday.

"Professor Summers has announced that he will retire from his academic and faculty appointments at Harvard at the end of this academic year and will remain on leave until that time," Newton said.

In November, when he went on leave from Harvard and resigned from the board of the artificial intelligence company OpenAI, Summers said, "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."

His statement then came after reports by the Harvard student newspaper, The Crimson, which detailed how Summers had sought guidance from Epstein while pursuing a romantic relationship with a woman.

On Tuesday, the Nobel Prize-winning scientist Richard Axel said he would step down as co-director of Columbia University's Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute in light of his own communications with Epstein drawing attention.

A third Ivy League school, Yale University, on Feb. 11 said it had barred professor David Gelernter from teaching computer science classes pending a review of his contacts with Epstein, which included mentioning a Yale student for a potential project.

Other high-profile people recently have suffered professional and legal fallout from their connections to Epstein being detailed in the DOJ's documents database.

Epstein killed himself in a New York City federal jail in 2019, weeks after his arrest on child sex trafficking charges.