Ex-Treasury Secretary Larry Summers quits Harvard over Epstein probe

WASHINGTON (Web Desk) - Former US treasury secretary and onetime Harvard president Larry Summers is retiring from his roles at the university after its review into his ties with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Summers will resign as co-director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government and retire from his other academic and faculty posts, Harvard said.

It comes a day after Nobel Prize-winner Richard Axel quit as head of Columbia University's neuroscience lab over his links to Epstein.

The justice department has released millions of documents from its investigation into the convicted paedophile, who died in a New York jail in 2019.

Neither Summers nor Axel has been accused by any Epstein survivor of misconduct, and there is no publicly available evidence indicating they were involved in any of the sex offender's crimes.

Harvard said in a statement on Wednesday that Summers' exit was "in connection with the ongoing review by the University of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein".

Summers wrote in a statement to the BBC that his decision had been "difficult".

"Free of formal responsibility, as President Emeritus and a retired professor," he added, "I look forward in time to engaging in research, analysis, and commentary on a range of global economic issues."

Summers said last November that he was taking leave while the college investigated his Epstein links.

He also expressed "regret" over the controversy while addressing students in a Harvard class.

The Epstein files indicated that Summers corresponded with Epstein until the day before the financier's 2019 arrest for alleged sex trafficking of children.

A decade earlier, Epstein had pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution from an underage girl.

Summers messaged Epstein in November 2018 seemingly asking for romantic advice related to his interest in someone he said viewed him as an "economics mentor".

"Think for now I'm going nowhere with her except economics mentor," Summers wrote in one exchange where Epstein referred to himself as Summers' "wing man".

"Am I thanking her or being sorry re my being married. I think the former," he wrote in another email.

The emails also indicated that Summers and Epstein dined together frequently, with Epstein often trying to connect Summers to prominent global figures.

After those emails were made public, Summers quit the board of OpenAI.

Summers held senior posts under two US presidents: treasury secretary under Bill Clinton and director of the National Economic Council under Barack Obama. He led Harvard from 2001-06.

Richard Axel, the Nobel laureate, said in his own statement on Tuesday quitting his leadership role at Columbia University's neuroscience lab: "My past association with Jeffrey Epstein was a serious error in judgment, which I deeply regret."

The university confirmed Axel was leaving his leadership role at the Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, but said he would keep his professorship and continue his research at the New York City campus.

The Epstein files indicate Axel was invited to Epstein's private island in December 2011.

Emails also indicate the neuroscientist tried to help Alice de Rothschild - the daughter of a billionaire European banker - gain admission to Columbia, at Epstein's behest.

"I have spoken with columbia admissions and she is good but not strongest candidate," Axel wrote to Epstein in November 2016. "I am pushing."

She reportedly enrolled at New York University to study biology instead.

The Rothschild family said in a statement this month to the New York Times: "Alice de Rothschild's university admissions in the United States, as well as her rejections, are entirely due to her grades."