Going from bad to worse…
A Harvard University student recorded the moment Professor Larry Summers began his economics class by addressing his “shame” at his past involvement with convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
The video captures Summers addressing newly public emails that revealed his continued contact with Epstein even after the financier’s 2008 conviction. He told students:
Some of you may have seen my statement of regret, expressing my shame with respect to what I did in communication with Mr. Epstein and that I’ve said I’m going to step back from public activities for a while for a time but that I think it’s very important to fulfil my teaching obligations. And so, with your permission, I’m gonna… we’re gonna go forward and talk about the material in the class.
The student who posted the clip captioned: “POV your Harvard prof opens class by recognizing he’s in the Epstein files.”
Harvard has started a new review of ties that its former president, Lawrence H. Summers, and others at the institution had with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, according to the university.
Harvard will examine a newly released batch of Epstein’s emails that include communications with Summers and others, The Boston Globe and The Harvard Crimson reported.
“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,” a Harvard spokesman, Jason Newton, said.
Harvard released a report in 2020 about Epstein’s ties to the university, and Summers’s relationship with him was previously known. But the emails released last week show that Summers had corresponded regularly with Epstein for years, suggesting a far more intimate relationship than was previously known.
Lawmakers last week released more than 23,000 documents belonging to Epstein, including emails and messages covering many years before he died in prison in 2019. They show that he and Summers often exchanged messages in 2017, 2018 and 2019, with Epstein sometimes offering advice about Summers’s relationship with a woman. The correspondence took place long after Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to prostitution-related charges. (RELATED: Former Obama Official Sought Jeffrey Epstein’s Advice On Courting Women)
In the email, Summers described a conversation with a woman:
“Then [she said] ‘I can’t talk later’. Dint [sic] think I can talk tomorrow.”
“I said what are you up to. She said ‘I’m busy’. I said awfully coy u [sic] are,” Summers wrote.
“And then I said. Did u [sic] really rearrange the weekend we were going to be together because guy number 3 was coming’. She said no his schedule changed after we changed our plans. I said ok I got to go call me when u feel like it.
“Tone was not of good feeling,” Summers summed up. “I dint [sic] want to be in a gift giving competition while being the friend without benefits.”
After the emails were released last week, Mr. Summers, a former Treasury secretary who was Harvard’s president from 2001 to 2006, said in a statement on Monday that he was “deeply ashamed” and would be stepping back from public commitments. Several institutions that he works with, including the Yale Budget Lab and the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning advocacy group, said that he would be ending his affiliations there.
Summers, also a former economic official under President Barack Obama, additionally resigned from the board at OpenAI.
“In line with my announcement to step away from public commitments, I have decided to resign from the board of OpenAI,” Summers said in a statement to CNBC on Wednesday. “I am grateful for the opportunity to have served, excited about the potential of the company, and look forward to following their progress.”
Summers was appointed to the OpenAI board of directors back in November 2023, when CEO Sam Altman — ousted by the previous board — returned to the company following an employee revolt, CNN reported at the time.
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