Larry Summers Resigns as Epstein Files Fallout Continues

Former Harvard University president Larry Summers will resign from his faculty position at the end of this academic year and will remain on leave until then, a university spokesperson confirmed to The Harvard Crimson on Wednesday. The decision is the latest of Summers’s efforts to scale back his public commitments after the extent of his longtime friendship with the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was revealed.

In a statement to the Crimson, Harvard’s student newspaper, Summers said the decision was “difficult” and that he was “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.”

“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 said.

Summers corresponded with Epstein for years after his 2008 conviction, at one point seeking advice about how to pursue a younger colleague and calling Epstein a “very good wingman.” Over the last several months, Summers has also stepped down from his teaching role at Harvard and resigned from the OpenAI Board of Directors. The New York Times declined to renew his contract with the Opinion section, the Center for American Progress ended his fellowship and Summers stepped away from an advising role at the policy research center Budget Lab at Yale University. In past public remarks, Summers has said he is “deeply ashamed” of his actions and takes responsibility for continuing to communicate with Epstein after he was convicted of soliciting sex from a minor in 2008. Summers has not been implicated in any of Epstein’s crimes.

Richard Axel, a professor of pathology and biochemistry at Columbia University, announced Tuesday he would step down from his role as co-director of the Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute to “focus on research and teaching in my lab.” He will also resign from his role as an investigator at Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Axel first got to know Epstein in the 1980s, The New York Times reported. In a 2007 New York magazine profile about Epstein, Axel described him as “extremely smart and probing” and said, “He has the ability to make connections that other minds can’t make.” Axel also had dinner with Epstein and helped the children of Epstein’s associates try to gain admission to Columbia. Axel has not been implicated in any criminal activity.

“My past association with Jeffrey Epstein was a serious error in judgment, which I deeply regret,” Axel wrote in a statement. “I apologize for compromising the trust of my friends, students, and colleagues. I recognize the problems this has caused, and I will work to restore this trust. What has emerged about Epstein’s appalling conduct, the harm that he has caused to so many people, makes my association with him all the more painful and inexcusable.”

Also in recent weeks, Bard University announced it had opened an external investigation into the communication between Epstein and university president Leon Botstein. The university is also delaying a New York gala celebrating Botstein.