Space lawmakers launched damning correspondence between economist Larry Summers and the overdue convicted intercourse culprit Jeffrey Epstein on Nov. 12, 2025. The exchanges, which have been amongst greater than 20,000 newly launched public paperwork, documented how Summers – a former U.S. Treasury secretary and Harvard College president – time and again sought Epstein’s recommendation whilst pursuing an intimate courting with a lady he was once mentoring.
The texts have ignited a brand new spherical of scrutiny of Summers and requires Harvard to revoke his tenure.
Protesters dangle indicators bearing pictures of convicted intercourse felony and Larry Summers confidante Jeffrey Epstein in entrance of a federal courthouse on July 8, 2019, in New York Town.
Stephanie Keith/Getty Pictures
Prestigious occupation is unraveling
Those revelations are resulting in the unraveling of Summers’ prestigious occupation.
The 70-year-old economist went on go away from educating at Harvard on Nov. 19. He has additionally stepped down from a number of forums on which he was once serving, together with Yale College’s Price range Lab, OpenAI and two suppose tanks – the Middle for American Growth and the Middle for International Building.
As well as, Harvard has introduced an investigation into whether or not Summers and people affiliated with the college broke college insurance policies thru their interactions with Epstein and must be topic to disciplinary motion.
Many organizations have severed their ties with Summers. Summers’ withdrawal from public commitments come with his function as a paid contributor to Bloomberg TV and as a contributing opinion creator at The New York Occasions. He additionally withdrew from the Crew of 30, a world crew of economic and economics mavens.
Collection of a wingman was once problematic
The correspondence that surfaced in overdue 2025 indicated that the distinguished economist had engaged in additional than informal banter with a convicted intercourse felony.
Epstein known as himself Summers’ “wing man.” Summers requested Epstein about “getting horizontal” together with his mentee – a feminine economist who had studied at Harvard. And, no longer for the primary time, Summers wondered the intelligence of girls.
Summers, who is among the country’s maximum influential economists, additionally complained in regards to the rising intolerance a number of the “American elite” of sexual misconduct.
Those feedback name into query Summers’ judgment, conduct and ideology and the ability dynamics between him and the ladies he has mentored.
As a feminine economist and a board member of the Committee at the Standing of Ladies within the Economics Career, I wasn’t shocked via the most recent revelations, surprising as they will seem.
Finally, it was once Summers’ disparaging remarks about what he stated was once girls’s relative incapacity to do math that led him to relinquish the Harvard presidency in 2006. And researchers had been documenting for years the gender bias that pervades the occupation of economics.
A leaky pipeline in upper training
Summers taught my first-year Ph.D. macroeconomics route ahead of he was a distinguished policymaker all the way through the Clinton management, and he steered me all the way through his administrative center hours. Fortunately I didn’t revel in any sexual harassment, however as an economics doctoral candidate at Harvard within the overdue Eighties, I did achieve firsthand perception into the elitist tradition of the country’s most sensible economics program.
Again then, handiest about 1 in 5 of the individuals who earned a Ph.D. in economics within the U.S. had been girls. This proportion rose to 30.5% via 1995 and has slightly budged since then.
In 2024, in line with the Nationwide Science Basis, 34.2% of newly minted economics Ph.D.s – about 1 in 3 – within the U.S. had been girls, a significantly decrease proportion than in different social sciences, industry, the arts and science.
After incomes doctoral levels in economics, girls face a leaky pipeline within the tenure monitor, the highest-paid, maximum safe and prestigious instructional jobs. The upper the rank, the decrease the illustration of girls.
In 2024, 34% of assistant professors in economics had been girls, however handiest 28% of tenured affiliate professors – your next step at the ladder – had been girls. And simply 18% of tenured complete professors in economics had been girls.
The gender hole is wider in influential positions, akin to economics division chairs and the editorial board individuals of economics journals. As of 2019, handiest 24% of the 55,035 editorial board individuals of economics journals had been girls. A short lived have a look at the internet sites of the highest 10 economics departments in overdue 2025 signifies that handiest a kind of 10 division chairs is a lady.
Newsletter patterns additionally replicate this inequality. Ladies are considerably underrepresented as authors within the most sensible economics journals, and this imbalance isn’t defined via high quality variations. Fairly, research have discovered that girls face upper hurdles in peer evaluate, departmental toughen and discovering productive co-authors.
Cold local weather
The information paints a transparent image of systemic bias within the occupation’s practices and tradition. That bias influences who succeeds and who’s sidelined.
A 2019 survey via the American Financial Affiliation, a qualified affiliation for economists, documented standard sexual discrimination and harassment. Virtually part of the ladies surveyed a number of the affiliation’s individuals stated that they’d skilled sexual discrimination that interfered with their careers by hook or by crook, and 43% reported having skilled offensive sexual conduct from some other economist.
A follow-up survey in 2023 indicated that the affiliation’s new tasks to toughen the pro local weather had led to little development.
Past academia
Economists can affect policymakers’ choices on rates of interest, taxation and social spending. In flip, the underrepresentation of girls in economics can abate policymaking via proscribing the variability of views that tell financial choices.
Researchers have discovered that arguments from feminine economists are more or less 20% extra persuasive in shaping public opinion than an identical arguments from males.
And but the gender hole nonetheless pervades economics out of doors academia. On the 12 regional Federal Reserve banks, for instance, girls constituted simply 23% of 411 analysis monitor economists in 2022.
Following its personal code of behavior
“Economists have a professional obligation to conduct civil and respectful discourse in all forums,” the American Financial Affiliation’s code of behavior states. The code offers organizations in economics a transparent foundation for deciding whether or not to stay or lower ties with Summers.
The Committee at the Standing of Ladies within the Economics Career has known as for all financial establishments to adopt investigations into Summers’ behavior.
As of early December, the level to which financial journals and different economics teams are responding to the talk was once nonetheless unclear.
I consider that getting rid of inequity in economics would take greater than an investigation of Summers’ behavior. In my opinion, establishments {and professional} associations, together with the American Financial Affiliation, must make stronger and put in force codes of behavior that quilt harassment, conflicts of passion and misuse of mentorship roles.
As well as, I feel that Summers’ ties to Epstein are an impressive reminder of why college economics departments want clearer requirements and extra transparency in hiring, promotions and management appointments. Strengthening the ones requirements would lend a hand them root out the sexism and different varieties of elitism that experience traditionally marked the occupation in order that instructional luck is pushed extra via benefit than self-perpetuating privilege.
It makes little sense to me that the economics occupation is claiming to wield authority whilst tolerating inequity and moral lapses. Taking those steps towards higher duty would lend a hand to revive agree with.
