Why did Larry Summers resign as Harvard’s president in 2006? Former Treasury Secretary steps away from public commitments amid Epstein scandal

Larry Summers, the United States' former Secretary of the Treasury, recently announced his decision to step away from public commitments after his friendship with convicted s*x offender Jeffrey Epstein was made public last week. For the uninitiated, the House Oversight Committee released a trove of documents received from the Epstein estate on November 12, 2025, which also included a series of emails exchanged between Summers and Epstein between 2013 and 2019.

The emails included Summers asking Epstein for advice on how to pursue romantic relationships. On November 17, 2025, Larry Summers revealed that he had paused his public commitments to "rebuild trust and repair relationships” in a statement to CNN. However, the former Harvard University president added that he would continue teaching economics at the university.

“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. While continuing to fulfill my teaching obligations, I will be stepping back from public commitments as one part of my broader effort to rebuild trust and repair relationships with the people closest to me," he said.

In 2006, Larry Summers stepped down as president of Harvard University after a five-year tenure. According to a New York Times article at the time, his tenure was marred by his changes to Harvard's culture, the appointment of new deans, and the overhauling of the undergraduate curriculum.

Summers also faced criticism for a speech he gave during a closed-door academic conference on women and science on January 14, 2005, where he suggested that the reason why there were fewer women in high-ranking positions in "science and engineering" was because of "issues of intrinsic aptitude."

“In the special case of science and engineering, there are issues of intrinsic aptitude, and particularly of the variability of aptitude, and that those considerations are reinforced by what are in fact lesser factors involving socialization and continuing discrimination,” Summers said.

Larry Summers apologized for his remarks in a subsequent letter, writing that he "did not say, and I do not believe, that girls are intellectually less able than boys, or that women lack the ability to succeed at the highest levels of science."

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Exploring Larry Summers' emails to Jeffrey Epstein

The correspondence between Larry Summers and Jeffrey Epstein from 2013 to 2019 showed that the two men exchanged opinions on various topics, including current events, politics, and high-profile figures. One email dated October 2017 saw Summers write to Epstein:

“I observed that half the IQ In world was possessed by women without mentioning they are more than 51 percent of population.”

Some emails showed Summers asking Epstein for romantic advice. In one email, dated November 2018, Summers sent Epstein an email he had received from a woman and asked for his advice on how to respond. Summers wrote that he believed "no response for a while probably appropriate," to which Epstein replied, “she’s already beginning to sound needy :) nice.”

According to CNN, the men exchanged a series of emails in March 2019 discussing whether Larry Summers should send a note to a woman he wanted to pursue romantically. Epstein wrote that sending a note would be “BAD FORM,” adding,

"You care very much for this person. You might want to demonstrate that. a note does the very opposite."

Senator Elizabeth Warren, a former Harvard Law School professor, has reportedly urged the university to cut ties with Larry Summers and hold him accountable for his correspondence with Epstein despite the latter being a convicted s*x offender.

In a statement to CNN, Warren claimed that Summers “cannot be trusted” with students, adding that his friendship with Epstein "demonstrates monumentally bad judgment."

“If he [Larry Summers] had so little ability to distance himself from Jeffrey Epstein even after all that was publicly known about Epstein’s sex offenses involving underage girls, then Summers cannot be trusted to advise our nation’s politicians, policymakers, and institutions — or teach a generation of students at Harvard or anywhere else,” she said.

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Meanwhile, Donald Trump's name was mentioned several times in the newly released documents, with an email from Epstein to Michael Wolff in January 2019 saying that the president "knew about the girls as he asked Ghislaine [Maxwell] to stop."

Edited by Juhi Marzia