Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers will resign from teaching at Harvard at the end of the academic year, amid the continuing fallout from his ties to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Summers will remain on leave until the end of the year.
Summers also resigned Wednesday as co-director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at Harvard Kennedy School, a position he had held since 2011. He will neither teach nor accept new advisees, according to the spokesperson.
The departure represents a striking turn for Summers, long regarded as one of the most prominent figures in American economics. His career included award-winning scholarship, service as U.S. Treasury secretary, and the presidency of Harvard.
In a statement to The Crimson student newspaper, Summers described the decision as “difficult” and said he remained “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.
Summers’ standing began to erode in November, when a trove of emails detailed a long-running personal relationship between him and convicted sex offender Jeffrey E. Epstein.
The messages showed Summers corresponded with Epstein about women, politics, and Harvard-related initiatives for at least seven years, remaining in contact as late as July 2019 — the day before Epstein’s final arrest.
© 2026 Thomson/Reuters. All rights reserved.