Lawrence Summers, the former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury and former president of Harvard University, announced on local time on the 25th that he would resign from his position as a Harvard professor at the end of this academic year, drawing high public attention. A Harvard university spokesman confirmed that Summers‘s move was closely related to the Epstein case, and that he had also been under investigation by the university in the previous months.
Summers announced his “retirement plan” on Wednesday, CNN reported on Thursday. Summers served as U.S. Treasury secretary from 1999 to 2001, was president of Harvard from 2001 to 2006, and served as chairman of the White House National Economic Committee under the Obama administration. A Harvard spokesperson said Summers resigned on the 25th from his position as co-director of the Musavar Rahmani Center for Business and Government at Harvard University’s Kennedy College. He has held this position since 2011. However, as of the press release, Summers still enjoys the highest academic title at Harvard University. Summers also revealed that he will continue to devote himself to research, analysis, and commentary on global economic issues after retirement. He will not return to his teaching post until he formally resigns.
A Harvard University spokesperson confirmed that the university had accepted Summers‘ resignation and said his move was related to a review the university was conducting regarding the U.S. government‘s “Epstein Papers.” The Harvard Crimson, a Harvard student newspaper, revealed that Summers‘ crisis had already begun long before the first batch of “Epstein Papers” were released: After information about his close personal relationship with Epstein was leaked in November last year, Summers issued a statement on the evening of November 17 saying that he was “deeply ashamed of his behavior” and announced that he would withdraw from “the public affairs he was responsible for,” but still stubbornly stated that he would continue to teach. However, as more and more “black material” was released, he now had to fade from public view. Not only did he leave his frontline teaching position, but he also suspended related collaborations with Bloomberg, the New York Times, and the artificial intelligence company OpenAI. The American Economic Association even put him on a blacklist.
Summers
U.S. public sources show that Summers and Epstein are both Jews, and the “friendship” can be traced back at least to the former‘s time as deputy secretary of the U.S. Treasury. Since 1998, Summers has traveled on Epstein‘s private plane at least four times. During Summers‘s tenure as president of Harvard University, Epstein had promised to donate $25 million to the university, and Summers had arranged for him to have an office specifically within the campus. The two sides also exchanged thousands of phone calls and emails, and this close contact continued until Epstein‘s arrest in 2019. The media described the way the two interacted as “long beyond the realm of professional cooperation,” and apart from business, they also talked a lot about politics and relationships. Once, Summers asked Epstein how to pursue the opposite sex. According to his description, he was trying to have a “romantic relationship” with one of his students.
Just a day before Summers announced his retirement, American physician Richard Axel, winner of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, resigned from his position at Columbia University, also because of his involvement in the Epstein case. Although the media is not yet certain whether Axel boarded the “Lolly Island,” there is now evidence that he did purchase the relevant airline tickets.
The “Epstein case documents” have a bad impact on social decorum and morals, and as the incident continues to fester, several more politicians and business people have lost their careers due to being involved in scandals. The U.S. website “Business Insider” revealed that former White House legal advisor and Goldman Sachs Group chief lawyer Katherine Rumler recently submitted her resignation, because recently revealed related documents revealed that she had once provided legal advice to Epstein, especially regarding sexual assault incidents. In return, Epstein had given her many expensive gifts, and Rumler even affectionately called Epstein “Uncle.” The current U.S. Secretary of Commerce Lutnick was also pressured by members of both parties in Congress for resigning from office because he had expressed intentions to go to “Loli Island” in his early years.