“I will always be grateful”: Larry Summers resigns from Harvard over Epstein files fallout

Former Harvard University President Larry Summers announced he would resign from his remaining positions at the university, following the reveal of his conversations with Jeffrey Epstein.

Summers, who served as secretary of the U.S. Treasury under former President Bill Clinton, appeared in photos and videos shared as part of the Department of Justice‘s staggered release of Epstein’s case files. He had already resigned from his position on the board of OpenAI. On Wedneday, the Harvard Crimson shared that Summers would leave his professorship at the Ivy League school.

“I have made the difficult decision to retire from my Harvard professorship at the end of this academic year,” Summers said. “I will always be grateful to the thousands of students and colleagues I have been privileged to teach and work with since coming to Harvard as a graduate student 50 years ago.”

Summers dded that he looks forward to “engaging in research, analysis, and commentary on a range of global economic issues.”

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Outside of Summers’ voluntary resignations, consequences for American politicians who appear in the Epstein files have been hard to come by. In contrast to the United Kingdom, where the former-prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was stripped of his titles and then arrested, the United States has been relatively light on accountability for associating with the late sex trafficker.

Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who also appeared in photos shared by the Department of Justice, said that he regretted knowing Epstein and denied ever traveling to Epstein’s infamous retreat in the U.S. Virgin Islands.