Harvard is set to launch a new investigation into its former university president and Bill Clinton economic adviser Larry Summers about his ties to the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein as it also emerged Summers has resigned from the board of OpenAI.
The moves comes after Summers said he would be stepping back from public engagements after emails revealed the extent of his relationship with the late sex offender.
A Harvard spokesperson confirmed to the Harvard Crimson on Tuesday night that a new investigation into Summers’s connections with the accused child sex trafficker was under way. The inquiry will also look at other university affiliates named in the documents, including Summers’s wife and nearly a dozen others.
A Harvard spokesperson, Jonathan Swain, told the student newspaper that “the University is conducting a review of information concerning individuals at Harvard included in the newly released Jeffrey Epstein documents to evaluate what actions may be warranted.”
Separately, the artificial intelligence company Open AI said in a statement that Summers had resigned from the company’s board. “Larry has decided to resign from the OpenAI Board of Directors, and we respect his decision,” the company said. Summers confirmed the decision in a separate statement. Axios reported the news.
Summers, who served as Bill Clinton’s treasury secretary, has also resigned or been let go from roles at other organizations, including Bloomberg and the New York Times, as well as the Center for American Progress thinktank.
Harvard’s investigation into Summers comes nearly a week after a congressional oversight committee released nearly 23,000 documents relating to Epstein that included correspondence with dozens on public figures, including Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard Law School professor emeritus, and Summers’s wife, Elisa New, who is an English professor.
In the exchanges between Epstein and Summers, he appears to solicit advice from the disgraced financier on his pursuit of a romantic relationship with a woman he described as his mentee. In one message from 2018, Epstein described himself as Summers’s “wingman”.
On Monday, Summers announced he would be stepping back from public life after documents were released by the committee. “I am deeply ashamed of my actions and recognize the pain they have caused,” he said in a statement.
“I take full responsibility for my misguided decision to continue communicating with Mr Epstein. 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 indicated that he still planned to teach classes at the university. But the Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren said he should not be trusted to teach or advise the government, saying the economist displayed “monumentally bad judgment” in his correspondence with the financier.
During Epstein’s efforts to rehabilitate his reputation following a 2008 Florida state conviction for solicitation of a minor, he leant heavily on connections to Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), both located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, though he had not been a student at either.
Soon after Epstein died in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, MIT said the institute would review its process for accepting donations after taking millions from foundations controlled by Epstein over a 20-year period. MIT’s former head, Joi Ito, was forced to resigned.
In other emails released last week New appeared to discuss her projects with Epstein, and solicited money, including a potential $500,000 gift to Poetry in America, a television show and digital initiative she oversaw.
“It really means a lot to me, all financial help aside, Jeffrey, that you are rooting for me and thinking about me,” New wrote in December 2015.
Harvard’s investigation into Summers comes after the university issued its earlier report into its ties to Epstein, finding that Epstein donated about $9m to the school between 1998 and 2008.
Harvard had launched an investigation into the university’s ties to Epstein in the month’s after he died in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal charges of sex-trafficking minors. Lawrence Bacow, Harvard’s president at the time, said he “profoundly regrets Harvard’s past association with him”.
“Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes were repulsive and reprehensible,” he said then. “Conduct such as his has no place in our society.”
