The remarkable downfall of Lawrence Summers, one of America's most influential economists, raises a critical question: why did his extensive connections to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein take so long to damage his prestigious career?
The Unraveling of a Powerhouse
Just last November, Summers basked in admiration during his 70th birthday celebration at Harvard University. The wood-paneled conference room hosted business leaders, academics, and political figures including former Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg and Gene Sperling, who directed the National Economic Council for Presidents Clinton and Obama. They gathered to honor the former Treasury Secretary and Harvard president, considered among the foremost economists of his generation.
This week, the scene couldn't have been more different. A chastened Summers stood before his Harvard students, asking for their forgiveness as his professional life collapsed around him. "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 said in a video that quickly spread across social media.
The Protective Shield of Power
This wasn't Summers' first apology regarding his Epstein connections. Over the years, he had flown on Epstein's private plane and maintained a personal relationship long after Epstein's 2008 plea to underage prostitution charges prompted Harvard to refuse his donations. Summers even courted Epstein to help fund an online poetry project being developed by his wife, Elisa New, now an emerita Harvard literature professor.
Yet these prior revelations never slowed the career of this academic and policy giant. His blessing could make careers for young acolytes, while his gravitas and extensive professional network made him indispensable for organizations during crises. He was barely mentioned in Harvard's 2020 report detailing institutional ties to Epstein, who was arrested on sex trafficking charges the previous year.
Even in 2023—months after The Wall Street Journal reported new details of Summers's correspondence with Epstein—he secured a plum assignment: an appointment to a new board at OpenAI, the artificial intelligence company behind ChatGPT.
"He's an extremely powerful man with an enormous network of people who have learned from him, been mentored by him," explained Susan Dynarski, a well-known Harvard economist. "He's powerful in D.C., powerful at Harvard. That counts for a lot, and that explains a lot."
The Final Straw: Revealing Messages
What made this time different was the release of deeply personal messages showing Summers seeking advice from Epstein about "getting horizontal" with a woman he was pursuing. These communications, sent in 2018 and 2019—up until the day before Epstein's arrest—were buried in approximately 20,000 pages of Epstein documents released by a House committee.
The messages reveal a more sordid side of the eminent economist, agonizing about leveraging a professional relationship into a romantic one. They demonstrate the intimacy of Summers's relationship with Epstein, who described himself as a "wing man" for the economist, even as the scale of Epstein's crimes against young women became widely known.
In November 2018, Epstein noted about Summers's object of interest: "She's already beginning to sound needy :) nice." The messages suggest they referred to the woman Summers was attracted to by a code name: "peril."
On Monday, Summers issued a more comprehensive apology: "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." He announced he would step back from public commitments as part of his effort to rebuild trust.
Institutional Abandonment and Consequences
Institutions quickly moved to sever ties with Summers. He lost positions at the New York Times, where he had been a contributing opinion writer; the Center for American Progress think tank; Santander bank's advisory board; Bloomberg TV; and the Yale Budget Lab.
By Wednesday morning, Summers had resigned his seat on the OpenAI board. Then Harvard—the mainstay of his life and career—announced it would reexamine his and other faculty members' ties to Epstein. By evening, he took leave from his teaching duties and his post as co-director of a Harvard Kennedy School academic center.
Summers's fall highlights the ongoing potency of the Epstein saga six years after the financier was found hanged to death in a New York jail cell while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. The coroner ruled it a suicide. Seemingly from the grave, Epstein continues to provoke disruptions, costing powerful men their careers and reputations.
A Pattern of Controversial Behavior
Summers's current troubles follow a pattern of behavior that critics describe as arrogant and socially inept. New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd once observed him yawning, checking his watch, and walking away while then-Vice President Biden spoke at a holiday party. She described Summers as "not exactly socialized" and called him "imperious."
In 2005, Summers sparked outrage by suggesting at a conference that fewer women than men might be in sciences due to aptitude differences. He later insisted he'd been misunderstood and apologized, but the controversy grew, leading to his resignation as Harvard president the following year.
More recently, Summers angered colleagues during the tumultuous period following Hamas's October 7th attack on Israel. He was an early and public critic of how Harvard's first Black woman president, Claudine Gay, handled campus protests and complaints of antisemitism. Gay resigned early last year, partly due to pressure over her response to the protests.
The Academic Legacy and Personal Connections
Summers's intellectual credentials were never in question. He counts two Nobel Prize-winning uncles—Paul Samuelson and Kenneth Arrow—and received his undergraduate degree from MIT and Ph.D. from Harvard. In 1983, he became one of the youngest people in modern history to be offered tenure at Harvard and won the John Bates Clark Medal, often a precursor to a Nobel Prize.
Summers gained wider acclaim for handling the 1998 emerging markets crisis as Clinton's Deputy Treasury Secretary. He appeared alongside Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan on a Time magazine cover that dubbed the trio "the committee to save the world."
In an Instagram post last year, Sheryl Sandberg recalled meeting Summers as a 20-year-old Harvard student and his profound impact on her life. "I am one of many who to this day think of themselves as 'Larry Summers' student,'" Sandberg wrote, noting how he advised on her thesis, hired her as a research assistant at the World Bank, and later as his chief of staff at Treasury.
Epstein's Harvard Connections Deepen
Summers was appointed Harvard's 27th president in 2001, while Epstein was becoming a prominent figure in Manhattan society as a mysterious financier and academic patron. According to Harvard's 2020 report, Epstein contributed $9.17 million to the university from 1998 until 2008, when his conviction on prostitution prompted the administration to officially shun him.
The largest gift was $6.5 million pledged in 2003—during Summers's presidency—to establish the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics. The program gave Epstein a campus office where he met with top researchers and government officials more than 40 times between 2010 and 2018.
Summers also sought Epstein's help for his wife's educational venture. "I need small scale philanthropy advice. My life will be better if i raise $1m for Lisa," Summers emailed Epstein in April 2014. Two years later, a nonprofit connected to Epstein donated $110,000 to New's nonprofit, which later contributed more than that amount to an anti-sex trafficking group.
The Personal Becomes Political
The recently released House documents reveal Summers remained in regular contact with Epstein, exchanging emails about White House gossip, geopolitics, and financial markets. President Trump, whose 2016 election victory shocked the establishment, was a frequent subject of their banter.
Around late 2018, their usual exchanges were interspersed with discussions about a particular woman—apparently Keyu Jin, a Harvard-trained Chinese economist in her late 30s. Summers appeared smitten, agonizing over whether to pursue an affair and how to approach it.
"Think for now I'm going nowhere with her except economics mentor," Summers wrote Epstein from a conference in November 2018. "She did not want to have a drink cuz she was 'tired.' I left the hotel lobby somewhat abruptly. When I'm reflective, I think I'm dodging a bullet."
The next morning, he continued fretting: "I sent a note just asking her to txt when she was up cuz I had something brief to say to her." Later that day, Summers appeared completely infatuated: "Game day at conference she was extremely good. Smart Assertive and clear Gorgeous. I'm fucked."
These intimate revelations, showing Epstein acting as Summers's "wing man" in personal matters, ultimately proved too much for even his powerful network to withstand, leading to the dramatic unraveling of one of America's most prominent academic and policy careers.
