Former US Treasury Secretary and Harvard University President Larry Summers is leaving his position as a professor at the elite university, he said in a statement on Wednesday.
“I have made the difficult decision to retire from my Harvard professorship at the end of this academic year,” Summers said in a statement. “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.”
The retirement is the latest fallout for Summers over his relationship with the now-dead sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Files released by the Justice Department and House Oversight Committee in recent months shed new light on Summers’ relationship with Epstein, who died in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges. Epstein pleaded guilty to less severe sex offenses in 2008.
Emails show the former Treasury Secretary sought Epstein’s advice on pursuing a romantic relationship with a woman he described as a mentee. Summers also made a sexist remark about women’s intelligence in his emails with Epstein.
Epstein, in one email, called himself Summers’ “wingman.”
A Harvard University spokesperson said Wednesday that Summers also resigned as the co-director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government, a research center.
Summers has been on leave from his teaching duties at Harvard since November and will remain on leave until the end of the academic year, the university spokesperson said.
Summers said in his own statement that he planned to continue working — just not as a Harvard professor.
“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,” Summers said.
Harvard announced in November that it opened a new investigation into Epstein’s relationship with Summers. That review remains “ongoing,” the university spokesperson said.
Last year, Summers was barred from the American Economic Association and resigned from the OpenAI board over his relationship with Epstein.
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