Economist Larry Summers will surrender from his tenured process as a professor at Harvard College, the varsity introduced on Feb. 25, 2026, following heightened scrutiny of his ties with the past due convicted intercourse wrongdoer Jeffrey Epstein. Summers will depart on the finish of the 2025-26 educational 12 months, with a brand new name: president emeritus.
It’s a comfortable touchdown for his fall from grace.
In November 2025, Harvard introduced an investigation of Summers, a former U.S. treasury secretary who prior to now served as Harvard’s president.
The probe seemed into whether or not Summers and different individuals of Harvard’s school and management had interactions with Epstein that violated its tips on accepting items and will have to be matter to disciplinary motion. Summers’ resignation is hooked up with this ongoing investigation, a Harvard spokesperson advised The Hill.
Regardless of repeated calls via scholars for Harvard to revoke Summers’ tenure, he held onto his educating and educational appointments at Harvard till he selected to retire. Scholars and personnel also referred to as for his resignation in 2005 following his disparaging feedback about ladies in science.
“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 mentioned in a commentary launched on Feb. 25.
No longer stunned
As a feminine economist and a board member of the Committee at the Standing of Girls within the Economics Occupation – a status committee of the American Financial Affiliation – I wasn’t stunned via the revelations of Summers’ obvious chumminess with Epstein, surprising as they will seem.
In the end, it was once Summers’ disparaging remarks about what he mentioned was once ladies’s relative lack of ability to do math that led him to conform to relinquish the Harvard presidency in 2006.
And for years, researchers have documented the gender bias that pervades the sector of economics.
The name of president emeritus is honorary. It brings with it symbolic popularity and the chance to take care of a proper connection to the college. Emeritus standing is selective and calls for approval at maximum universities. It’s generally bestowed on retiring professors.
Personally, via conferring this name on Summers, Harvard is signaling that tough males can out survive gross misconduct with their honorifics intact.
Paperwork launched in 2025 pointed to near ties between Jeffrey Epstein and Larry Summers.
New York State Intercourse Perpetrator Registry by way of AP/Michel Euler
Summers’ ties to Epstein
Summers, till his entanglement within the Epstein scandal got here to gentle, was once a number of the country’s maximum influential economists.
However his historical past of public controversy stretches again to no less than 1991, when a memo he wrote whilst serving because the Global Financial institution’s leader economist gave the impression to justify sending poisonous waste to poorer international locations.
Complaint of Summers surged after the Area of Representatives launched damning messages between Summers and Epstein as a part of a sell off of greater than 20,000 public paperwork from Epstein’s property in November 2025.
Summers was once shut sufficient to Epstein that during 2014, the intercourse wrongdoer named the economist as a backup executor for his property.
The Division of Justice launched a far greater tranche of paperwork in January 2026 in compliance with a legislation handed via Congress. Thus far, no main media outlet has reported on any new Summers fabrics found out in consequence.
Protesters cling indicators bearing footage of convicted intercourse legal and Larry Summers confidante Jeffrey Epstein in entrance of a federal courthouse on July 8, 2019, in New York.
Stephanie Keith/Getty Photographs
Harvard’s gradual reaction
The Summers-Epstein exchanges launched in November ignited a brand new spherical of scrutiny and ended in the unraveling of Summers’ prestigious occupation.
Summers went on depart from educating at Harvard on Nov. 19 and stepped down from a number of high-profile forums.
However past launching the investigation, Harvard took no decisive motion to self-discipline or sanction Summers. This calculated hesitation, which displays the establishment’s efforts to courtroom investment, energy and affect amongst best donors, seems to have put donor politics above elementary duty.
Against this, the American Financial Affiliation, the main skilled affiliation for economists, did take swift and cruel motion. In an unparalleled transfer, on Dec. 2, 2025, the AEA introduced that it had positioned a life-time ban on Summers from all its meetings and different actions.
Having a variety of corporate
To make certain, Harvard isn’t the one prestigious college coping with the aftermath of the Epstein revelations.
The Epstein paperwork come with proof that directors and professors at different prestigious schools and universities like Duke, Yale, Bard, Princeton and Columbia additionally exchanged messages with Epstein.
As public investment for upper schooling has eroded, universities have increasingly more became to rich donors to underwrite main initiatives and complement budgets via endowing professorships and analysis facilities. Epstein seems to have taken good thing about this dependence on wealthy supporters via presenting himself as any individual who may just ship each his personal cash and get admission to to different prosperous donors.
Disturbingly, Summers was once rarely the one student to solicit Epstein’s lend a hand in pursuing ladies.
Amongst others, Duke College economist Dan Ariely requested him for the touch data of a “redhead” he had met, and Yale pc scientist David Gelernter advised Epstein a couple of lady he known as a “v small goodlooking blonde.”
Harvard scholars and different protesters call for an finish to Larry Summers’ Harvard presidency in 2005, after he made disparaging remarks about ladies in science.
Jodi Hilton/Getty Photographs
An economics downside
Whilst Summers’ habits and the reported dynamics between him and a girl he mentored might seem surprising, they’re all too commonplace in economics. For years, researchers were documenting the gender bias that pervades the career.
The knowledge presentations that abuse of energy is commonplace amongst male economists.
A 2019 survey via the AEA documented common sexual discrimination and harassment. Virtually part of the ladies surveyed mentioned that they’d skilled sexual discrimination, and 43% reported having skilled offensive sexual habits from any other economist – virtually at all times males.
Additionally, a 2021 find out about revealed via the Nationwide Bureau of Financial Analysis documented adverse environments in economics seminars, with feminine presenters experiencing extra interruptions and encountering extra patronizing habits.
In 2024, consistent with the Nationwide Science Basis, about 1 in 3 newly minted economics Ph.D.s within the U.S. had been ladies, a significantly decrease percentage than in different social sciences, industry, the arts and medical disciplines. This ratio has modified little or no since 1995.
After incomes doctoral levels in economics, ladies face a leaky pipeline within the tenure observe, which represents the highest-paid, maximum safe and prestigious educational jobs. The upper the rank, the decrease the illustration of girls.
The gender hole is wider in influential positions, comparable to economics division chairs and the editorial board individuals of economics journals. Girls also are considerably underrepresented as authors within the best economics journals.
This bias now not best hurts ladies who’re economists; it may possibly additionally bog down policymaking via proscribing the variability of views that tell financial choices.
Permitting a comfortable touchdown
Permitting Summers to begin a dignified retirement whilst proceeding to carry honorifics dangers signaling that there are in the end few penalties on the very best in upper schooling.
I imagine that if schools and universities need to turn out that they’re fascinated by confronting abuses of energy inside their ranks, they will have to display that status does now not entitle someone, alternatively completed, to a comfortable touchdown.
Parts of this text seemed in a similar article revealed on Dec. 2, 2025.
