Elizabeth Warren Asks Harvard to Cut Ties with Larry Summers

Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers speaking at the 2025 Dialogues for Democracy at the Rob and Melani Walton Center for Planetary Health in Tempe, Arizona by Garry Skidmore. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has asked Harvard University to cut ties with Harvard faculty Larry Summers, a friend of deceased convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, in light of the newly released Epstein files. On Wednesday, November 12, the House Oversight Committee released thousands of pages of documents from the Epstein estate. The files contain more details into the sex-trafficking crimes of wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein. 

On July 6, 2019, Epstein was arrested and charged with one count of sex trafficking of minors and one count of conspiracy to commit sex trafficking of minors. Epstein pleaded not guilty; however, a month after his arrest, he was found dead in his jail cell, in which he reportedly committed suicide. Although Epstein’s death limits the information regarding what crimes he was involved in, the  files found in his estate contain lists of his victims, his clients, his business partners, and the various illegal interactions. The files provide valuable insight into the extent of his crimes. These files are currently in the possession of the United States Department of Justice and have been released slowly under the pressure of Congress, with the first phase released on February 27, 2025. 

On November 12, the House Oversight Committee released the most recent batch of files that included many text and email exchanges between Epstein and Larry Summers, who served as Harvard’s president from July 2001 to June 2006. The messages span from 2013 to 2019 and demonstrate a close friendship between the two men. The content of the messages includes Summers asking Epstein for romantic advice on his secret affair with his young female economics mentee. The files revealed that Summers communicated with Epstein about a young woman that he pursued while he served as her “mentor.” Summers met the woman in November of 2018 at an academic conference. Only days after their meeting, Summers began texting Epstein details and updates about her interactions with him. In their revealed text messages, Summers directly discussed the woman’s relationship with Epstein, in which both men referred to the woman by the code name of “peril”, never using her real name. The two men joked about the probability that Summers would have sex with this woman, with Epstein describing himself in one message as Summers’s “wing man” in the pursuit of the young mentee. 

Also found were records of the men's in-person interactions. While serving as the president of Harvard University, Summers flew multiple trips on Epstein’s private airplane and also met with Epstein more than a dozen times. On some of these occasions, Summers accepted the disgraced financier’s money as donations. Other documents discovered revealed previous messages that Summers sent joking about women’s intelligence. One message included Summers’s description of what he deemed as excessive penalties for men who “hit on” women in the workplace.

After the files' public release, Summers sent a statement to the Harvard Crimson, Harvard University's student newspaper, on Monday, Nov 17, sharing that, “I am deeply ashamed of my actions and recognize the pain they have caused.” He also stated, “My association with Jeffrey Epstein was a major error of judgment.” Along with this statement, Summers stepped down from multiple positions he previously held, including board member of the OpenAI Board, the Yale Budget Lab, and the Center for American Progress.

Summers resigned as Harvard University President in 2006 due to his controversial remarks about women’s abilities compared to men’s in the field of science. He issued a regretful statement explaining “The signal that got sent from those remarks that many people took from that was totally different from what I intended or believed.” Despite his resignation, Summers has continued to teach at the institution and is currently a Charles W. Eliot University Professor. His title of University Professor represents an extremely notable recognition as one of the 24 individuals that Harvard University honors for their groundbreaking work across the boundaries of multiple disciplines. 

Elizabeth Warren, Senator from Massachusetts and former Harvard professor, released a statement on Monday, November 17, 2025, asking Harvard to cut ties with Larry Summers. Warren told CNN that Summers “cannot be trusted” and shouldn’t “teach a generation of students at Harvard or anywhere else.” 

Initially, Harvard didn’t respond to Warren’s statement; however, on Wednesday, November 19, Summers announced that he was stepping down from his duties at Harvard. His spokesman, Steven Goldberg, shared, "His co-teachers will complete the remaining three class sessions of the courses he has been teaching with them this semester, and he is not scheduled to teach next semester."

With Summers now taking a leave from teaching and no future courses scheduled for next semester, Harvard finds itself at a critical juncture as it confronts itself with important decisions regarding how to address the concerns raised by his communications with Epstein. With the next batch of the Epstein files being released soon, the university’s next steps will play a central role in demonstrating how it intends to uphold its institutional standards and confront outside pressure, as well as responding to the fallout as a result of the Epstein files release.