Ex-Harvard President & Former Treasury Secretary Resigns After Epstein Ties Exposed

Prominent economist, former U.S. Treasury Secretary, and ex-president of Harvard University, Larry Summers, announced on Wednesday that he will be resigning from his academic and faculty roles at Harvard at the end of the 2025–26 academic year amid mounting controversy over his ties to the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

Harvard University confirmed to The New York Times that Summers also stepped down immediately from his leadership position as co-director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at the Harvard Kennedy School, a post he had held since 2011. He had been on leave since November 2025 while the university conducted a review of documents tied to Epstein that were released by the U.S. government.

The university’s review, reportedly led by Harvard Kennedy School Dean Jeremy Weinstein, came after the release of millions of pages of materials from the Jeffrey Epstein files by the Department of Justice and the U.S. House Oversight Committee last year. Those records included hundreds of email exchanges between Summers and Epstein stretching over several years. Their last contact was reportedly in 2019, days before Epstein’s final arrest.

In a written statement released Wednesday to the campus newspaper, the Harvard Crimson, Summers acknowledged the difficulty of his decision. He expressed gratitude 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 added.

After the correspondence was exposed, Summers initially sought to keep teaching. However, in November 2025, he stepped back from public roles, including resigning from the board of OpenAI and withdrawing from several advisory and media positions, after news broke of his communications with Epstein. At that time, Summers said he was “deeply ashamed” of his actions and sought to focus on repairing strained personal relationships.

According to Harvard spokesperson Jason Newton, Summers will remain on leave through the end of the academic year and then officially retire from Harvard’s faculty. Newton linked the move to the ongoing review of Epstein-related documents, which the university said recently were provided by government authorities.

Summers’s decades-long career includes serving as Treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton from 1999 to 2001, director of the National Economic Council in the Obama administration, and president of Harvard University from 2001 to 2006.