Larry Summers Stepping Away From Harvard, OpenAI Board After Release of Epstein Emails

Former Harvard University President Larry Summers is taking leave from Harvard University and has resigned from the board of OpenAI after the release of emails between him and now-deceased convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

After previously maintaining that he would keep his commitments to teach economics at Harvard University, The Harvard Crimson first reported that Summers planned to go on leave from the university.

Summers is not scheduled to teach any classes in the upcoming semester, according to his spokesperson Steven Goldberg. The spokesman also confirmed that Summers is taking leave from his position as director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government with the Kennedy Harvard School.

“Mr. Summers has decided it’s in the best interest of the Center for him to go on leave from his role as Director as Harvard undertakes its review,” Goldberg told The Associated Press.

Summers confirmed earlier on Nov. 19 that he would also be stepping away from the board of OpenAI amid the fallout of the emails released last week.

“In line with my announcement to step away from my public commitments, I have also decided to resign from the board of OpenAI,” Summers told The Epoch Times via email on Nov. 19.

“I am grateful for the opportunity to have served, excited about the potential of the company, and look forward to following their progress.”

Summers has said previously that he regrets spending time with Epstein.

“I have great regrets in my life,” Summers said earlier in the week in a statement to media outlets. “As I have said before, my association with Jeffrey Epstein was a major error of judgment.”

OpenAI, an artificial intelligence organization that created ChatGPT, did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.

Summers joined the OpenAI board in 2023, part of an effort to restore stability at the nonprofit and bring back its CEO, Sam Altman, after its previous board members fired Altman days earlier.

Among the 20,000 documents recently released by the House of Representatives Oversight Committee, a number showed that Summers, also a former U.S. Treasury secretary, maintained a friendly relationship with Epstein long after Epstein pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution from an underage girl in 2008. Federal charges were also brought against Epstein in mid-2019 for allegedly abusing and trafficking other girls for sex with others.

In a newly released March 2019 email, Summers told Epstein about a phone call with a woman who spurned him. “I said what are you up to,” Summers wrote. “She said ‘I’m busy.’ I said awfully coy u are.”

Summers then described asking the woman why she had changed the plans they had, and how, shortly after, he bade goodbye. “Tone was not of good feeling,” he said.

Epstein called the woman smart and said she was “making you pay for past errors,” but that Summers “reacted well” and “showed strength” by not whining.

In another missive, from 2016, Summers said he would offer quiet advice to anybody who could use it after Epstein set him up with Karim Wade, a former minister in Senegal.

Harvard on Wednesday said it was conducting a new probe into links between Epstein and Summers, who was Harvard’s president from 2001 to 2006 after serving as U.S. Treasury secretary from 1999 to 2001.

“The University is conducting a review of information concerning individuals at Harvard included in the newly released Jeffrey Epstein documents to evaluate what actions may be warranted,” a spokesperson said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.