{"id":172643,"date":"2025-11-21T11:53:39","date_gmt":"2025-11-21T11:53:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/larry-summers-years-of-emails-with-jeffrey-epstein-roil-harvard-nbc-news\/"},"modified":"2025-11-21T11:53:39","modified_gmt":"2025-11-21T11:53:39","slug":"larry-summers-years-of-emails-with-jeffrey-epstein-roil-harvard-nbc-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/larry-summers-years-of-emails-with-jeffrey-epstein-roil-harvard-nbc-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Larry Summers' years of emails with Jeffrey Epstein roil Harvard – NBC News"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Larry Summers\u2019 ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein were long public knowledge. But the recent publication of emails<\/a> between the two men show they were closer than had been publicly known, creating a dilemma \u2014 and a reputational headache \u2014 for Harvard University, the Ivy League institution where Summers is on the faculty and once served as president.
In interviews this week, a group of Harvard faculty members and students<\/a> decried Summers\u2019 email correspondence with Epstein, which continued more than a decade after the disgraced financier pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution from a minor. The two men chatted about politics and current affairs, and Summers looked to Epstein<\/a> for advice on his relationship with a woman.
Lola J. DeAscentiis, 21, an undergraduate student who is taking one of Summers\u2019 classes, said she believes his decision to step back from teaching at the university was \u201cthe very least that can happen.\u201d DeAscentiis is one of the organizers of a petition \u2014 \u201cTell Harvard: Shut Out Summers!\u201d \u2014 demanding that Harvard revoke Summers\u2019 tenure.
\u201cI think there\u2019s hope that Harvard and people outside Harvard will recognize this is such a widespread issue on our campus,\u201d DeAscentiis said. \u201cEpstein is no longer alive, but his legacy is alive and well, and his friends are still in high places.\u201d
Summers, 70, announced earlier this week he would withdraw from \u201cpublic commitments,\u201d<\/a> including his role on the board of directors at OpenAI. Harvard, for its part, said it would investigate links between faculty members and Epstein. Summers then announced late Wednesday that he would go on leave<\/a> from his teaching duties while that investigation unfolds.
\u201cI am deeply ashamed of my actions and recognize the pain they have caused. I take full responsibility for my misguided decision to continue communicating with Mr. Epstein,\u201d Summers said in a statement earlier this week.
Harvard\u2019s media office did not immediately respond to an emailed list of questions. Summers\u2019 spokesperson declined to comment.
\u201cThe cozy friendship between Epstein and Summers on display in the emails is disgusting and disgraceful,\u201d Joseph Blitzstein, a statistics professor, said in a statement to The Crimson<\/a>, Harvard\u2019s student-run newspaper. (Blitzstein did not respond to NBC News\u2019 request for comment, one of dozens sent to Harvard faculty members this week.)
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., has effectively called for Summers\u2019 ouster, saying in a statement that \u201cSummers cannot be trusted to advise our nation\u2019s politicians, policymakers, and institutions \u2014 or teach a generation of students at Harvard or anywhere else.\u201d
It would not be easy for Harvard to cut ties with Summers, a former treasury secretary and White House adviser. He has a tenured position<\/a>, a form of permanent employment in academia. Harvard\u2019s provost office says on its webpage that professors can be removed \u201conly for grave misconduct or neglect of duty\u201d by the Harvard Corporation, the school\u2019s highest governing body.
Summers has not been accused of taking part in Epstein\u2019s criminal enterprise.
In an interview, one professor said the recent scrutiny on Summers has reopened old wounds from his sometimes rocky time both as university president and instructor.
\u201cHe\u2019s known to be a bully,\u201d said Alison Frank Johnson, a history professor and the chair of the department of Germanic languages and literature.
Johnson used a moniker that has trailed Summers throughout his academic career. The New York Times, summing up his term as president, once wrote<\/a> he \u201calienated professors with a personal style that many saw as bullying and arrogant.\u201d
Johnson said many on Harvard\u2019s campus have long been skeptical of Summers in part because of \u201cdisgraceful\u201d remarks he delivered at a closed-door economic conference in 2005. In a speech that year before the National Bureau of Economic Research, Summers said women might lack an \u201cintrinsic aptitude\u201d<\/a> for science and engineering.
Summers apologized and insisted his comments had been \u201cmisconstrued.<\/a>\u201d The Faculty of Arts and Sciences lodged a vote of no confidence in his leadership. The furor, combined with other campus controversies, including a public clash with the public intellectual Cornel West, proved too intense to surmount. Summers resigned from the presidency in February 2006.
Four months later, Harvard announced Summers had been named a \u201cUniversity Professor\u201d \u2014 the highest faculty rank, and an honor extended to only a handful of academic luminaries. He has held the distinction ever since.
Summers has more recently drawn criticism from some on campus over his public stances on the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. Summers, who has said he was \u201csickened\u201d by what he viewed as the university\u2019s silence after Oct. 7 and a rise in antisemitism, publicly castigated \u201cIsrael demonizing faculty\u201d<\/a> \u2014 namely, Walter Johnson, a fellow University Professor.
Johnson, a history professor and former adviser to the campus\u2019 Palestine Solidarity Committee, lambasted Summers in an email, calling him a \u201cprejudiced and unprincipled bully\u201d and assailing him for his criticism of pro-Palestinian activists at Harvard.
\u201cI wouldn\u2019t miss him,\u201d Johnson said in part, adding that he did not have a clear-cut take on Summers\u2019 future at Harvard: \u201cWhether it is appropriate for the University to discipline someone for things \u2014 no matter how tawdry and small-minded \u2014 revealed in a state-sponsored dump of their private email seems to me to be an open question.\u201d
The emails released by House lawmakers show that Summers and Epstein communicated as recently as 2019, more than a decade after Epstein pleaded guilty in Florida state court to soliciting prostitution from a minor. They continued to correspond until July 5, 2019, a day before Epstein was arrested and charged with sex trafficking of minors.
The length of Summers\u2019 relationship with Epstein represents not \u201cjust one lapse\u201d but a \u201ccharacter flaw,\u201d Rachel McCleary, an economics department lecturer, told The Crimson.
In one set of emails, Summers, who is married to the academic Elisa New, sought Epstein\u2019s advice<\/a> on his romantic pursuit of an unnamed woman he described as a mentee. Epstein described himself as a \u201cpretty good wing man\u201d for Summers. Summers lamented that the woman seemed interested in someone else: \u201cI dint [sic] want to be in a gift giving competition while being the friend without benefits.\u201d
Epstein replied: \u201cshes smart. making you pay for past errors. ignore the daddy im going to go out with the motorcycle guy, you reacted well.. annoyed shows caring., no whining showed strentgh.\u201d (NBC News is quoting from the messages verbatim, typos included.)
In another set of emails, Summers decried that men who \u201chit on\u201d women may face repercussions in the workplace. In an email dated Oct. 27, 2017, Summers revisited the subject of intellectual differences between men and women, telling Epstein: \u201cI observed that half the IQ in world was possessed by women without mentioning they are more than 51 percent of population.\u201d
The cache of emails has been the subject of extensive reporting from The Crimson, which broke the news<\/a> on Wednesday night that Summers would not finish his remaining three class sessions this semester and planned to go on leave as director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at the Harvard Kennedy School.
Epstein\u2019s ties to Harvard have been extensively documented. Harvard carried out what it characterized as a \u201cfull review\u201d of the financier\u2019s connections to the university, releasing a 27-page report in May 2020 that confirmed the school received $9.1 million in gifts from him between 1998 and 2008.
The report said \u201cno gifts were received from Epstein following his conviction in 2008.\u201d (Epstein served a year in Florida jail as part of a secret agreement<\/a> with federal prosecutors that later led to an internal Justice Department investigation. Epstein\u2019s death in custody in 2019 while awaiting federal prosecution was ruled a suicide.)
Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard law professor, said in an email to NBC News that the recent revelations about Summers\u2019 relationship with Epstein raise questions about the 2020 report.
\u201cI think the important thing is that Harvard is revisiting the report they wrote in 2020,\u201d Lessig wrote. \u201cBut the important output from that effort should not just be what we all know \u2014 that Larry was integral to Epstein\u2019s relationship to the University \u2014 but the part we don\u2019t know: Why did Harvard hide this connection in 2020? Their report was Hamlet without the prince. Why?\u201d
Harvard did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Lessig\u2019s email.
The day before Summers announced he would step back from teaching, he returned to a Harvard lecture hall and directly addressed the Epstein scandal, according to a video posted on TikTok <\/a>that was verified by NBC News.
\u201cI think it\u2019s very important to fulfill my teaching obligations,\u201d he told his students, \u201cand so, with your permission, we\u2019re going to go forward and talk about the material in the class.\u201d
Summers changed his public position by the following night, and his future at Harvard remains unclear.
\u201cMr. Summers has decided it\u2019s in the best interest of the Center for him to go on leave from his role as Director as Harvard undertakes its review,\u201d Summers\u2019 spokesman, Steven Goldberg, said in a statement Wednesday.
\u201cHe is not scheduled to teach next semester,\u201d Goldberg added.
Daniel Arkin is a senior reporter at NBC News.
© 2025 NBCUniversal Media, LLC<\/p>\n

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news AlertsThere are no new alerts at this timeLarry Summers\u2019 ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein were long public knowledge. But the recent publication of emails between the two men show they were closer than had been publicly known, creating a dilemma \u2014 and a reputational headache \u2014 for Harvard University, the Ivy League […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":172644,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-172643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172643\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/172644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}