Lawrence H. Summers, a Harvard University economist and the school’s former president, will resign from teaching at the end of the academic year, according to a Harvard spokesman.
The announcement comes months after documents released by the Department of Justice showed a close relationship between Mr. Summers and Jeffrey Epstein long after Mr. Epstein was convicted of prostitution involving a minor.
Mr. Summers, who has been on leave since November, will not return to teaching before he leaves the university. He has also resigned as co-director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government, the spokesman said. His resignation comes “in connection with the ongoing review by the University of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein that were recently released by the government,” the spokesman, Jason Newton, said in a statement.
The announcement was first reported by The Harvard Crimson, the student newspaper.
Harvard also confirmed Wednesday that Martin A. Nowak, a professor of mathematics and of biology, who has a long documented history with Mr. Epstein, has been placed on administrative leave “pending further investigation by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.”
Mr. Summers, a former U.S. treasury secretary and one of the nation’s best known economists, said in a statement that he had made “the difficult decision” to retire, and he “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.”
As president emeritus and a retired professor, he said, he looks forward to “engaging in research, analysis and commentary on a range of global economic issues.”
Mr. Nowak did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Summers’s resignation is the culmination of a cascade of new revelations in recent months about the nature of his relationship with Mr. Epstein, the disgraced financier who died by suicide in 2019 while facing sex trafficking charges. Mr. Summers’s link to Mr. Epstein had been known for years, but emails released in November by a congressional committee revealed that they had maintained a deeply personal relationship, even after Mr. Epstein became a registered sex offender.
In their exchanges, the men bantered about Mr. Summers’s romantic interest in a woman who was not his wife. (Mr. Summers is married to a Harvard literature professor.) Mr. Epstein described himself as Mr. Summers’s wingman.
In 2019, Mr. Summers complained to Mr. Epstein about the woman’s involvement with someone else. “I said what are you up to. She said ‘I’m busy,’” he wrote. “I said awfully coy u are.”
Mr. Epstein wrote back, “shes smart. making you pay for past errors. ignore the daddy im going to go out with the motorcycle guy, you reacted well.”
In other messages, he referred to the woman using racist language. “I’d be happy to have a rational affair w yellow peril,” he wrote in a message to Mr. Epstein. Minutes before, the former Treasury secretary had written he was “way smitten with her so woukd sacrifuce lots for being w her.”
Harvard has been conducting a review of the university’s ties to Mr. Epstein, including through employees and donors.
For decades, Mr. Summers has been one of America’s most visible public intellectuals. But amid the email revelations in November, he issued a statement saying he was “deeply ashamed” and taking “full responsibility for my misguided decision to continue communicating with Mr. Epstein.”
He tried to continue teaching last year after his emails with Mr. Epstein were released, but quickly changed course as people began calling for his ouster, including students and Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat. Mr. Summers announced at that time he would step back from teaching and public life, leaving his co-professors to finish up instruction for the fall semester. He also left positions he had held with policy groups and resigned from the board of OpenAI, which he had joined in 2023.
Harvard banned donations from Mr. Epstein after he pleaded guilty to sex crimes in 2008, but a number of academics related to the university maintained relationships with Mr. Epstein after he was released from jail in 2009.
They include Elisa New, who is a professor of American literature, emerita, and who is married to Mr. Summers; Dr. Nowak, professor of mathematics and of biology, who once led Harvard’s Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, to which Mr. Epstein had donated; and Harvard professor emeritus Stephen Kosslyn, who also had accepted donations from Mr. Epstein.
Neither Ms. New nor Mr. Kosslyn immediately responded to requests for comment. Ms. New has previously said that she regretted accepting Mr. Epstein’s donation and staying in contact with him.
A previous investigation by Harvard into the school’s ties to Mr. Epstein, released in 2020, made only one explicit reference to Mr. Summers, noting that he had helped found a program envisioned by Mr. Epstein. In a footnote, the report mentioned an Epstein-related contribution to a nonprofit group led by Ms. New. But Harvard said it did not investigate the donation because it was not made directly to the university.
Alan Blinder contributed reporting.
Mark Arsenault covers higher education for The Times.
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