Harvard faculty weigh in on investigation into university connection to Epstein

Some Harvard faculty say they're encouraged the university has started a new investigation into the connections between school members and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Harvard confirmed Wednesday it would examine community ties after newly released emails showed a close relationship between Epstein and Larry Summers, the school’s former president and tenured economics professor. Summers said Wednesday he will step away from his teaching obligations for the rest of the semester.

Summers, who also served as U.S. Treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton and economic adviser to President Barack Obama, has faced his share of controversy in the past. He hasn't been accused of wrongdoing in the Epstein case, but the latest trove of emails puts a new spotlight on the close nature of their relationship and the length of it.

The school did not offer any more specifics on the investigation, including what actions it’s considering or who they are looking into. Other members of the community, including Elisa New, an emerita literature professor and Summer's wife, are also shown in the emails to have held close ties with Epstein.

Epstein was convicted in 2008 of solicitation of prostitution with a minor under age 18 and in June 2019, was charged federally with sex trafficking of minors. Epstein's death in a jail cell two months later was ruled a suicide.

This new review marks the second time Harvard has scrutinized its community connections to Epstein. The school initially investigated ties in 2020.

In an email to WBUR, Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig criticized what he felt was left out of Harvard's initial investigation into the school's ties to Epstein. That investigation concluded that Epstein donated $9.1 million to the school between 1998 and 2008 — but didn't include details on Summers.

"I was encouraged that they announced they would reopen the investigation, which concluded ... without accounting for Larry Summers' role in Epstein's relationship to Harvard," Lessig said. "It is essential that in reopening that investigation, Harvard also accounts for why he was excluded from the report initially."

Lessig alleged the university "chose intentionally to exclude [Summers] in the reports."

"They mentioned his wife without identifying it was his wife in a footnote. They didn't mention him at all in relation to these substantive issues," Lessig said.

The May 2020 report mentions Summers once, in connection with a lab known as the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics which he established in 2003 as then-university president "following an imaginative proposal by Jeffrey Epstein and Benedict Gross."

The report also references New once, noting a $110,000 donation by Epstein to a nonprofit run by the professor. In a statement through her spokesperson Wednesday, New expressed “profound regret over accepting a donation from Jeffrey Epstein and I am deeply sorry for maintaining contact with him.”

New added that she made “a personal donation in 2019 to an organization actively involved in combating sex trafficking” in an amount greater than Epstein’s monetary donation to her nonprofit. New, who now works at Arizona State University, didn’t specify the amount of the donation.

Summers in a statement earlier this week said he was "deeply ashamed" of keeping in contact with Epstein.

Walter Johnson, a professor of history and African and African American Studies, did not mince words in an email to WBUR on Wednesday, writing, “from my perspective, Summers is a prejudiced and unprincipled bully.”

“So, I wouldn’t miss him and I’m not surprised to hear that others feel the same way,” he wrote. “Whether it is appropriate for the University to discipline someone for things — no matter how tawdry and small-minded — revealed in a state-sponsored dump of their private email seems to me to be an open question.”

Theda Skocpol is a government and sociology professor who was dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences during the final year Summers was president. She said the administration shouldn’t be in a rush to take extreme action against Summers.

"Harvard should apply its rules fairly and quickly in any investigation," she said  Thursday. "Summers should not be pushed out of his professorship simply because it is expedient for Harvard authorities to do that. That would set a bad precedent that would ensnare others unfairly in the future."