Former Treasury Secretary and Harvard professor Larry Summers said on Monday that he will step back from his public commitments after he was exposed for sending emails seeking sex tips from sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
However, Summers, who referred to the billionaire sex offender as his "wingman" in the emails made public by the House Oversight Committee, still plans to keep teaching economics at the Ivy League university. "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," the disgraced professor said in a statement, which has left many utterly shocked.
Out but Not Completely
"While continuing to fulfill my teaching obligations, I will be stepping back from public commitments as one part of my broader effort to rebuild trust and repair relationships with the people closest to me," Summers added.
Summers, who once served as Harvard's president, kept up a steady stream of emails with Epstein between 2013 and 2019. In those messages, the two often chatted about news, politics, and even Summers' personal life.
At one point, the 70-year-old economist opened up to Epstein about a woman he had been seeing, joking that he felt like "the friend without benefits" after she broke things off in 2019. He even asked Epstein for advice on how to respond to her texts.
All of this took place years after Epstein's 2008 conviction for sex crimes involving minors, and well after Harvard cut ties with him and stopped accepting his donations.
The emails have now prompted Senator Elizabeth Warren to call on Harvard to sever its relationship with Summers. Warren, noting that Summers is a former Harvard president, Bill Clinton's Treasury Secretary, and Barack Obama's National Economic Council director, told CNN that she does not believe he "can be trusted" around college students, given his long-standing ties to Epstein.
Summers has been married for two decades to Elisa New, a professor emerita of American Literature at Harvard. It's unclear from the emails whether the couple has an open arrangement or whether Summers was being unfaithful.
What the Emails Say
In one message from March 2019, Summers confided in Epstein that he was worried the time and attention he was giving another woman might not result in the romantic payoff he hoped for. "I dint (sic) want to be in a gift giving competition while being the friend without benefits," he wrote.
Summers even analyzed his interactions with the woman the way an economist might — thinking in terms of what he was giving and what he hoped to "get back," as if he were calculating a return on investment.
Epstein, for his part, tried to encourage him, telling the anxious professor that his restraint and lack of "whining" showed strength.
Still, Summers vented that the woman had ditched their plans to spend time with another man she found very attractive but didn't see as a suitable long-term partner. Summers said he felt he couldn't call her out for it because of the imbalance in their relationship — and because he himself had canceled on her before due to "family and work constraints."
"Should I just wait for her to call?" he asked Epstein, even floating the idea of telling the woman she had already "used up 80 percent of what she was owed" by making him rearrange his schedule.
According to the Harvard Crimson, Epstein often joked that he acted as Summers' "wingman" in these exchanges.
In another instance, in November 2018, Summers even forwarded an email from a woman to Epstein and asked him for help crafting a response.
"Think no response for a while probably appropriate," Summers wrote, according to CNN.
"she's already beginning to sound needy :) nice," Epstein replied in part.
In another email from October 2017, Summers vented to Epstein that men could now be kicked off a social media platform or pushed out of a think tank just because they had "hit on a few women 10 years ago," expressing anger at what he saw as shifting social norms.
Speaking to The Harvard Crimson on Wednesday, Summers said he now regrets ever maintaining a friendship with Epstein. "I have great regrets in my life. As I have said before, my association with Jeffrey Epstein was a major error of judgment," he said.
Summers' decision to pull back from public life comes just a day before the House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on whether to make all documents tied to Epstein's crimes public.
