Larry Summers to resign as Harvard professor

Larry Summers, the former U.S. Treasury secretary who has been dogged by his past friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, announced Wednesday that he will resign from teaching at Harvard University by the end of the current academic year, the university said.

Summers previously served as president of Harvard.

His resignation came as the university was conducting a review of emails and other documents detailing Summers’ connection to Epstein, which were released in recent months by the Department of Justice and Congress.

Summers has not been accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein. He will not teach or take on new advisees until his retirement is effective.

“In connection with the ongoing review by the University of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein that were recently released by the government, Harvard Kennedy School Dean Jeremy Weinstein has accepted Professor Lawrence H. Summers’ resignation from his leadership position as co-director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government,” Harvard spokesman Jason Newton told CNBC in a statement on Wednesday.

“Professor Summers has announced that he will retire from his academic and faculty appointments at Harvard at the end of this academic year and will remain on leave until that time,” Newton said.

Summers’ resignation comes three months after he took a leave from Harvard, where he had been teaching classes, and after he resigned from the board of the artificial intelligence company OpenAI amid controversy over the release of emails between him and Epstein.

“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 in a statement obtained by CNBC in November.

His statement came on the heels of reports by the Harvard student newspaper, The Crimson, which detailed how Summers had sought guidance from Epstein while pursuing a romantic relationship with a woman.

In a statement to The Crimson on Wednesday, Summers called his decision to leave his professorship “difficult,” but also 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,” Summers told the newspaper.

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