Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers has announced his immediate departure from his role at Harvard University amid a renewed investigation into his connections with the controversial Jeffrey Epstein.

At 70 years old, Summers, who has held significant positions in both academia and government, will not be completing his scheduled lectures for the fall semester. Additionally, he will not be teaching in the upcoming spring semester.

A spokesperson informed the Harvard Crimson that Summers’ co-instructors are set to take over the final three sessions of the course he was teaching, ensuring the continuity of the curriculum.

Summers, who has also served as Harvard’s president, will be stepping away from his responsibilities as the director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at the Harvard Kennedy School, effective immediately.

“In light of Harvard’s ongoing review, Mr. Summers believes it is in the best interest of the Center for him to take a leave of absence from his directorial duties,” the spokesperson added.

A university representative has since confirmed Summers shared his intentions with the school, which had announced hours earlier it is conducting a ‘review of information concerning individuals included in the newly-released Epstein documents to evaluate what actions may be warranted.’

Summers had previously said he would be ‘stepping back’ from public life but would continue to teach economics at Harvard after damning emails revealed how he had been communicating with Epstein for years.

He even asked the pedophile for sex and love advice – prompting Epstein to refer to himself as Summers’ ‘wingman.’ 

Disgraced economist Larry Summers has announced he is leaving his position at Harvard University

In email exchanges dated between 2013 and 2019, Summers and Epstein shared their thoughts about current events and politics – while also delving into the married economics professor’s love life. Epstein is pictured smiling at Summers in 2004

A university official has confirmed Summers shared his intent to leave his position immediately

‘I 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,’ Summers said on Monday.

‘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 has now severed his relationships with think tanks Center for American Progress and the Center for Global Development and has stepped down from his position on the board of OpenAI.

‘Larry has decided to resign from the OpenAI Board of Directors, and we respect his decision,’ the company said. ‘We appreciate his many contributions and the perspective he brought to the Board.’

Meanwhile, The New York Times Opinions section and Bloomberg News announced they would not be renewing his contract as a contributing writer.

But over the past few days, pressure has been mounting on Summers to step away from his teaching position – with Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren urging Harvard to cut ties with him.

She told CNN she believes Summers ‘cannot be trusted’ with young college students given his lengthy friendship with Epstein.

Warren added that Summers displayed ‘monumentally bad judgment’ in his messages with Epstein while he was married to Elisa New, a professor emerita of American Literature at Harvard. 

It is unclear whether they have an open relationship or if he was cheating on his partner of now-20 years.

Summers had previously said he would be ‘stepping back’ from public life but would continue to teach economics at Harvard

Summers is married to Elisa New, who is a professor emerita of American Literature at Harvard. They are pictured walking together during the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference in 2022

In the email exchanges dated between 2013 and 2019, Summers and Epstein frequently shared their thoughts about current events and politics – while also delving into the married economics professor’s love life. 

He complained to the now-disgraced financier in one of the messages about feeling like ‘the friend without benefits’ in his relationship with a woman who jilted him in 2019, and asked him for tips on how to reply to her texts. 

The message came long after Epstein pleaded guilty to sex crimes against children in 2008 – and Harvard had already stopped accepting donations from him the previous year in light of the allegations. 

In one March 2019 email, Summers complained to Epstein that he was concerned that the attention he was giving one woman may not pay off in the form of sexual reward. 

‘I dint (sic) want to be in a gift giving competition while being the friend without benefits,’ he wrote. 

Summers analyzed his exchange with the woman in classic economic terms, by weighing up how he could maximize profit from what he gave. 

Epstein praised the hopeless professor for his efforts, writing that his lack of ‘whining’ to the woman ‘showed strength’. 

The economics professor then whined that the woman had abandoned plans with him for another man she was ‘really attracted’ to but was ‘unsuitable as a partner’.

He told Epstein he could not criticize her for this due to their power dynamic, and because he had canceled on her thanks to ‘family and work constraints’ in the past.

‘Should I just wait for her to call?’ he asked the sex offender, while suggesting that he could alternatively tell the woman she had ‘used up 80 percent of what she was owed’ by making him change his plans. 

Summers analyzed his exchange with a woman in classic economic terms, by weighing up how he could maximize profit from what he gave in the exchange with Epstein

In November 2018, Summers also forwarded an email from a woman to Epstein in order to ask his advice on what he should write back. 

‘Think no response for a while probably appropriate,’ Summers wrote, according to CNN. 

‘she’s already beginning to sound needy 🙂 nice,’ Epstein replied in part. 

The previous year, in October 2017, Summers raged to Epstein that men could be banned from a social media site or a think tank because ‘they hit on a few women 10 years ago’. 

Based on their correspondences, Epstein had come to think of himself as Summers’ ‘wingman,’ according to The Harvard Crimson. 

Summers told The Harvard Crimson last week that he regretted his friendship with Epstein. 

‘I have great regrets in my life. As I have said before, my association with Jeffrey Epstein was a major error of judgment,’ he said. 

Summers previously served as the Treasury Secretary in the Clinton administration

Former Vice President Al Gore is pictured congratulating Summers after he was sworn in

Summers has worked at Harvard since 1993, when he became an economics professor. He then served as the school’s president from 2001 to 2006, when he resigned following a faculty no-confidence vote due to a speech he made suggesting the lack of women in science and engineering might be connected to differences in their aptitudes for the subjects.

Prior to joining the faculty at Harvard he served as the Treasury Secretary for the Clinton administration. He has also advised Joe Biden’s presidential campaign.

But when Harvard conducted a review of Epstein’s ties to the school – including financial documents and meetings with members of the faculty – Summers name came up in a citation for the website for the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, which he established with funding from Epstein.

According to the May 2020 report, Epstein visited the program’s offices dozens of times between 2010 and 2018, the Wall Street Journal reports.  

Yet Summers was not the only Harvard faculty member named in the documents, according to The Harvard Crimson.

Harvard Law School Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz was also named in the files – as was Summers’ wife, Elisa New. 

In the end, Harvard officials have said Epstein donated more than $9 million to the school prior to his death in 2019

The documents show that New discussed her personal projects at length with Epstein, soliciting thousands of dollars from him even after Harvard said it would stop taking contributions from the disgraced financier.

In one 2014 exchange, New and Epstein discussed a $500,000 gift to Poetry in America, a television show and digital initiative she spearheaded.

The emails also show she once accepted an unspecified amount of money from Leon Black, an executive at private equity firm Apollo, in a gift she wrote Epstein helped broker.

‘It really means a lot to me, all financial help aside, Jeffrey, that you are rooting for me and thinking about me,’ she wrote in December 2015.

In the end, Harvard officials have said Epstein donated more than $9 million to the school prior to his death in 2019.

The school has since agreed to adopt new guidelines on accepting potentially controversial gifts and revise its procedures for appointing visiting fellows – a one-year non-degree seeking research position Epstein held in 2005 under Summers’ presidency.