Ex-Harvard president Larry Summers joked about ‘women being less intelligent than men’ in emails to Epstein

Ex-Clinton Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers was friends with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein until just before his death in 2019 and appeared to joke with him about women being less intelligent than men, emails released by the House Oversight Committee show.

The emails have raised eyebrows, especially in academia circles, as Summers was President of Harvard University from 2001 until 2006.

“I observed that half the IQ in world was possessed by women without mentioning they are more than 51 percent of population…” Summers wrote to Epstein in an October 2017 email, without further context.

Summers is currently a Harvard University professor and on the board of directors at software company OpenAI.

He and Epstein regularly communicated about women, politics, and Harvard-related projects, in hundreds of messages exchanged between 2013 and 2019.

In another message, Summers referenced the school’s rescinded 2017 admission of Michelle Jones, who spent more than two decades in prison for killing her 4-year-old son, comparing her case to the school’s reaction to “hitting on a few women.”

“I’m trying to figure why American elite think if u murder your baby by beating and abandonment it must be irrelevant to your admission to Harvard, but hit on a few women 10 years ago and can’t work at a network or think tank.DO NOT REPEAT THIS INSIGHT.”

A spokesperson for Summers did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.

Summers also often sought dirt on President Donald Trump during his first presidency, even questioning Epstein if he could be an illicit drug user, the newly released records show.

“How plausible is idea that Trump is a real cocaine user?” Summers, apparently fishing for information, wrote to Epstein in 2016.

Trump is famously a teetotaler who has long claimed to never have taken drugs, drank alcohol or smoked. Epstein, also, was known to be sober. There is no record in the files of whether he answered the email.

Meanwhile Summers — who has been married to Elisa New since 2005 — also frequently asked his pal for advice with women.

Summers, who served in the administrations of both former President Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, last emailed Epstein for advice regarding an unnamed woman in March 2019 — just months before Epstein was arrested for sex trafficking. He was then found dead in his jail cell that August.

In one exchange, Summers told Epstein he had responded to the woman brushing him off by telling her “awfully coy u are”, before adding: “Did u really rearrange the weekend we were going to be together because guy number 3 was coming”.

“I dint want to be in a gift giving competition while being the friend without benefits,” Summers recounted to Epstein, adding that “she must be very confused or maybe wants to cut me off but wants professional connection a lot and so holds to it.”

In his response, Epstein suggested the woman was making Summers “pay for past errors” but “no whining showed strength.”

In 2014, Summers had sought advice from Epstein about how to raise $1 million to help his wife, New, also a Harvard professor, create an online educational project about American poetry.

The exchange was reported in 2023 by the Wall Street Journal, which noted that a nonprofit linked to New had received a $100,000 donation from Epstein.