Harvard professor Larry Summers awkwardly addressed his sordid emails to Jeffrey Epstein by reading a humiliating statement to his undergrads this week.
Summers, 70, said he felt “shame” for his many emails to Epstein, in which he sought advice on pursuing women and complained to the convicted sex offender that others, including a “mentee,” refused to sleep with him.
“I just want to say before we start that it’s not easy for me to be here,” he whined to a lecture hall full of economics students, a video obtained by the Daily Beast shows.
Summers, while fidgeting and glancing at a paper, continued, “Some of you will have seen my statement of regret, expressing my shame with respect to what I did in communication with Mr. Epstein, and that I’ve said that I’m going to step back from public activities. But for a time, I think it’s very important to fulfill my teaching obligations, and so, with your permission, we’re going to go forward and talk about the material.”
There was no notable reaction from his students.
The Harvard Crimson, which first uncovered the emails, reports that the class is an elective for undergraduates, “The Political Economy of Globalization.” Summers was previously president of Harvard, Treasury secretary in the final years of the Clinton administration, and a top adviser to Barack Obama during the Great Recession.
After addressing the elephant in the room, Summers went on to lecture as usual on Tuesday. He discussed the G20 and the importance of America’s “soft power” along with his co-instructor, Robert Z. Lawrence.
At one point, Summers said it is essential that America “seduces” nations before threatening them in dealmaking. He also noted that former United Kingdom Prime Minister Tony Blair is scheduled to join the class via video during his next lecture, an attendee told the Beast.
The Epstein scandal has led to Summers being ousted by several organizations with which he was affiliated.
He was forced to step down from the OpenAI board; The New York Times announced that it would not renew his contract as an opinion writer; and the left-leaning think tank Center for American Progress, the Yale Budget Lab, and the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution also announced that they had cut ties with him.
Making matters worse for Summers, he is also staring down a probe by Harvard that is exploring his ties to Epstein, whom he regularly emailed starting in 2013—about five years after the financier was convicted of soliciting a teenager for prostitution.
Emails, released as part of a trove of documents made public by the House Oversight Committee last week, portrayed Epstein and Summers as close friends. Epstein even described himself as Summers’ “wing man” at one point.
Despite being married since 2005, Summers regularly spoke of pursuing other women. In a 2017 email, he complained about the professional repercussions that men face if they “hit on a few women 10 years ago.”
The final correspondence between Summers and Epstein came on July 5, 2019, a day before federal agents arrested Epstein on sex trafficking charges.
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