Harvard University professor Larry Summers, 70, made a surprising statement to his students earlier this week about his past contact with Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier who was convicted of sex crimes. The former Harvard president spoke up after new emails came out showing he had been talking with Epstein for years, right up until a few months before Epstein got arrested in 2019.
According to Unilad, the House Oversight Committee put out more than 20,000 documents from Epstein’s estate that showed a lot of back and forth between Summers and Epstein from 2013 to 2019. The emails had them talking about all kinds of things, from politics to personal stuff. Some of the messages even showed Summers asking Epstein for advice about going after a woman he called a mentee, even though Summers was married.
A student recorded Summers on social media as he stood in front of his class and said, “Some of you will have seen my statement of regret, expressing my shame, with uh respect to what I did, communication with Mr. Epstein.” He told everyone he was going to “step back from public activities for a while” but still wanted to keep teaching because he thought it was “important to fulfil my teaching obligations.” Then he asked the students, “So, with your permission, I’m, we’re going to go forward and talk about the material in the class.”
This wasn’t going to end well for Summers
After the video started spreading all over social media, more and more people began calling for action against Summers and Harvard. Senator Elizabeth Warren from Massachusetts said schools and other groups should cut ties with Summers because he “cannot be trusted” to guide politicians or teach young people after keeping up his friendship with Epstein for so long, even years after Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting prostitution from an underage girl.
Harvard said it would look into everyone at the school who showed up in the new Epstein papers. At first, Summers said he would keep teaching his classes no matter what. But just a few days after the video went viral, he changed his mind. Someone speaking for him said he would take leave from running the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at the Harvard Kennedy School right away.
In what illustrates a stunning fall from grace, viral video filmed by a student shows former Treasury Secretary and Harvard professor Larry Summers opening a class this week by addressing the trove of new documents that reveal his communications with Jeffery Epstein. pic.twitter.com/eoolSGSQqD
— New York Post (@nypost) November 20, 2025
Summers also quit his spot on the board at OpenAI, the company that makes ChatGPT. A bunch of other places started backing away from him too. The New York Times said it would not give him a new contract to write opinion pieces, Bloomberg stopped using him as a paid contributor, and several policy groups said he was no longer working with them. The ongoing controversy over the Epstein files has kept people talking and paying attention.
Larry Summers was 64 years old when he had this email exchange with Jeffrey Epstein. It truly goes to show that every human being, no matter their age, wealth and power, is secretly an insecure 12 years old. pic.twitter.com/F0zIAZnthQ
—Jon Schwarz
Summers worked as Treasury Secretary under President Bill Clinton from 1999 to 2001 and ran Harvard from 2001 to 2006. He had to step down from leading Harvard back in 2006 after he got in trouble for saying men might be naturally better at science than women.
The newly released emails have brought up fresh concerns about whether he has good judgment, with some Harvard teachers saying his friendship with Epstein was not just one mistake but shows something deeper about his character. Other teachers will finish teaching the last three classes he was supposed to lead this semester, and he will not be teaching at all next semester.
