Former Harvard president and Treasury secretary Larry Summers is stepping back from public engagements after his ties to Jeffrey Epstein were brought into fuller view last week.
Summers, a Harvard professor, said in a statement on Monday that he would continue teaching economics at the university. While he didn’t specify which engagements he would part from, the Yale Budget Lab said he informed them that he would no longer be on its advisory group, The New York Times reported. Summers is also reportedly ending his fellowship at the Center for American Progress, a think tank for left-wing causes, a spokesperson for the organization said.
“I am deeply ashamed of my actions and recognize the pain they have caused,” said Summers, who was also White House National Economic Council Director for the first two years of the Obama administration. “I take full responsibility for my misguided decision to continue communicating with Mr. Epstein.”
He added: “While continuing to fulfill my teaching obligations, I will be stepping back from public commitments as one part of my broader effort to rebuild trust and repair relationships with the people closest to me.”
Summers, 70, communicated with Epstein through 2019, right up until the disgraced financier’s arrest for sex trafficking.
In some messages, Summers sought Epstein’s advice on a female colleague, whom he used racist language to describe.
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a former Harvard Law School professor, had spoken out against Summers maintaining a high-profile public image in the wake of the email release.
“For decades, Larry Summers has demonstrated his attraction to serving the wealthy and well connected, but his willingness to cozy up to a convicted sex offender demonstrates monumentally bad judgment,” Warren said in a statement, per CNN.
“If he had so little ability to distance himself from Jeffrey Epstein even after all that was publicly known about Epstein’s sex offenses involving underage girls, then Summers cannot be trusted to advise our nation’s politicians, policymakers and institutions—or teach a generation of students at Harvard or anywhere else.”
Summers was Treasury secretary for the final few years of the Clinton administration, after which he was president of Harvard until 2006. The university did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Beast, and neither did Summers.
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