Lawrence “Larry” Summers, former U.S. Treasury secretary and former president of Harvard University, is resigning from his tenured professorship at Harvard amid renewed scrutiny of his ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Summers, who became a tenured Harvard faculty member in 1983, said he will step down at the end of the academic year and leave his role as co-director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government, NBC News reported. He will not accept any new positions at the university.
“I have made the difficult decision to retire from my Harvard professorship at the end of this academic year,” Summers said in a statement, according to NBC. “I 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.”
“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 added.
The decision comes as Harvard conducts an ongoing review of potential links between faculty members and Epstein. A batch of files first released by the House Oversight Committee in November 2025 indicated that Summers maintained contact with Epstein for more than a decade after the late financier pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution from a minor in 2008.
According to the records, Summers communicated with Epstein — who died in August 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges — as recently as July 5, 2019, the day before Epstein’s final arrest.
In a series of messages in 2018 and 2019, Summers — who has been married to Elisa New since 2005 — asked Epstein for advice about a romantic interest he described as a mentee. Epstein called himself a “pretty good wing man” in response. In another email, Summers wrote about concerns that men who “hit on” women could face repercussions in the workplace.
Documents reviewed by the university also showed that Summers and New made a “brief visit of less than a day” to Epstein’s private island during their 2005 honeymoon, according to a statement from Summers’ spokesperson shared by NBC.
The Harvard Crimson reported that Summers flew on Epstein’s private plane at least four times, making at least three of the trips while serving as Harvard’s president, and met with him more than a dozen times. Epstein donated millions of dollars to Harvard during Summers’ presidency from 2001 to 2006, the student-run newspaper also reported.
Summers served as Treasury secretary under former President Bill Clinton and later as the director of the National Economic Council under former President Barack Obama. He has been on leave from teaching duties since November 2025, when the university began its review.
A growing list of public figures has faced fallout over ties to Epstein. Dr. Peter Attia, a physician and social media influencer, recently resigned from a contributor role at CBS News because of his relationship with Epstein, Zeale News previously reported. In the UK, Peter Mandelson, a former UK ambassador to the U.S., and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly known as Prince Andrew, were both arrested by British authorities on suspicion of misconduct in public office after documents revealed them to have been connected with Epstein.