Despite past controversies, Larry Summers has kept a hold in elite circles

Larry Summers has seen his share of controversy, and up to now, he's always bounced back. But the scandal engulfing those with ties to Jeffrey Epstein is, for now, derailing the high-profile economist at the university where he was once a hard-charging president.

Summers, 70, this week stepped down from roles at a number of organizations, including the boards of OpenAI and a host of economic nonprofits and think tanks. At the time, he said he'd fulfill his teaching obligations at Harvard University, and in class Tuesday, he told students what he told the public.

"Some of you will have seen my statement of regret, expressing my shame with respect to what I did in communication with Mr. Epstein," Summers told the students, according to a post on X.

But by Wednesday night, Summers announced he was taking a leave from Harvard while the school investigates his ties to Epstein. His spokesperson in a statement confirmed, "His co-teachers will complete the remaining three class sessions of the courses he has been teaching with them this semester, and he is not scheduled to teach next semester.”

A trove of emails released by Congress shows years of chummy correspondence between the convicted sex offender and Summers, an economist who served two U.S. presidents.

Summers has not been accused of wrongdoing, nor with participating in Epstein's criminal activity.

On Wednesday, Harvard said it was opening an investigation into ties between the school's community members and Epstein. Several people with ties to Harvard appeared in the reams of released Epstein documents, including Summers' wife, emerita professor Elisa New, who received a donation from Epstein that was not accounted for in a Harvard report, according to a Boston Globe report. Lawyer and former Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz is also in the emails.

Some students told the Harvard Crimson that Summers should resign.

Gov. Maura Healey told reporters Wednesday she supports a full investigation.

"This whole Epstein thing has really bothered me," she said. Healey declined to say whether she thought Summers should be permitted to teach.

"I think anybody who has been associated with Jeffrey Epstein in that way and continued communication even after everything came to light and the nature of that communication should be ashamed," she said.

Richard Bradley, the author of Harvard Rules: The Struggle for the Soul of the World's Most Powerful University, said Summers built a reputation with both brilliance and a kind of bull-in-the-china-shop approach that appealed to many.

"It's hard to think of a way out of this mess for Harvard. And it's just as hard to think of a way out of this for Larry Summers," Bradley told WBUR. "When people see a figure like Larry Summers engaging with Jeffrey Epstein for a decade after Epstein was first convicted of being a sex-offender, it validates this perception that the rich in the United States really don't think they're like the rest of us."

Summers has spent much of his time as a speaker in the rarefied air of economic summits, on academic panels and in podcasts and on TV. In recent months he has opined on matters including the Federal Reserve, China, the tech/AI bubble and speech on college campuses.

Summers has commanded fees as high as $100,000 for speaking engagements, according to a booking agency site. He's touted as a financial thought leader, with praise from the likes of the late political commentator David Gergen, who's quoted as calling him a "guru" with regard to the economy.

On Wednesday, Summers’ videos and content were removed from the website of the Harry Walker Agency, another speaker’s bureau.

Summers was scheduled to speak at WBUR earlier this week, but canceled when news of the Epstein emails broke. His colleague and fellow economist, Jason Furman, appeared in his place. When asked about the scandal, he defended Summers, calling him "a good friend" and brilliant.

"He's offered an enormous amount intellectually and to policy over the last 40 years," Furman said. "I hope he's in a position to do that again in the future, but now is not the time for that."

Summers' influence has lasted well beyond his controversies of the early 2000s. As president of Harvard from 2001 to 2006, he had a reputation as a domineering and self-assured boss, even steering the school into a risky debt strategy and encouraging aggressive investments in the endowment that went south later, in the 2008 global financial crisis.

Comments Summers made about women in science in 2005 drew a sharp criticism across academic circles. Then came the recent emails, in which Summers, who is married, bantered with Epstein about pursuing a woman he described as a "mentee."

Allison Frank Johnson, a professor of history at Harvard, called the Epstein emails "horrifying," but not surprising.

"It's clear that Larry Summers already told us what he thinks about women as scientists, as colleagues a long time ago. And these new messages only underscore what we already knew, and it's nothing that I take any pleasure in," she said in an interview Wednesday.

Summers, a U.S. Treasury secretary under President Clinton, left Harvard to serve as President Obama’s National Economic Council director in the tumultuous 2009-2010 period following the financial crisis. After that, he returned to Harvard.

Starting in 2023, Summers has attacked his own institution and its leaders in the wake of Hamas’s attack on Israel, accusing Harvard of failing to adequately condemn the attacks and protect students from alleged antisemitism on campus.

Summers is a tenured member of Harvard's faculty, and is one of only 24 "University Professors," the top title given to the school's 900 academics. A university spokesman declined to respond to a question about whether Summers' tenure is at risk.

Bradley, the "Harvard Rules" author, has his doubts.

"Wanting to explain why they have on their payroll a man who was a pedophile pen pal is just not a position the university wants to maintain," he said.

With additional reporting from WBUR's Chris Van Buskirk and Stephanie Brown.

This story was updated to reflect the development of Summers stepping away from teaching during the investigation.