Professors and students are reacting to former Harvard president Larry Summers’ decision to step away from teaching, at least for now, as the university reexamines its ties to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
A spokesperson for Summers said Wednesday night that his co-teachers will take over the rest of this semester’s economics classes that he was involved in, and that he’s not scheduled to teach in the spring. Summers will also “go on leave” from his role as director of the Kennedy School’s Center for Business and Government.
A Harvard spokesperson declined to comment beyond confirming that “Summers had communicated his decision to the University.”
U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, who previously taught at Harvard Law School, and others have urged the university to bar Summers from the classroom altogether.
“Larry Summers cozied up to the rich and powerful — including a convicted sex offender,” Warren said on X. “He cannot be trusted in positions of influence.”
Some faculty say that goes too far.
Harvard historian Walter Johnson says that who Summers socializes with — and how he conducts his personal life — should be his own business.
“I know more about that already than I wish I did,” Johnson told GBH News. “If the university believes that he has violated institutional rules, the relevant issues should be addressed according to existing policies and procedures. But if what’s happening is that Harvard just wants to distance itself from Larry Summers because he is inconvenient and embarrassing right now, I suggest they instead turn their attention to addressing some of the damage that he has done.”
Johnson said Harvard could start by disavowing Summers’ past comments referring to pro-Palestinian students as “Hamas-supporters,” or by distancing itself from his well-documented statements on women’s intellectual capacity in math and science.
Harvard senior Eunice Chon, cofounder of the campus Feminist Coalition, said she knew Summers had “a long history of saying really messed up things,” but she was still surprised, disgusted, and disappointed by what she read in his email exchanges with Epstein, including instances of “Asian fetishization.”
Chon said she had mixed feelings about Summers stepping down, noting that he was known for caring deeply about undergraduates. But after reading how Summers wrote to Epstein about a mentee, she said she came to see him as a potential danger in the classroom.
“I thought that was very clear,” she said. “Students are starting to get concerned about going to office hours, asking for feedback on papers, and building relationships with professors outside of class, and that is a core part of my undergraduate education.”
Before announcing his decision to step aside, Summers said he had “great regrets,” was “deeply ashamed,” and called his relationship with Epstein a “major error in judgment.”
Some students and faculty said that wasn’t enough. Mary Waters, director of undergraduate studies and a sociologist at Harvard, said while the university can’t strip Summers of his tenure “unless more wrongdoing comes to light,” he should “retire and go away.”
“And he certainly should not be anywhere near students,” she added.
Three other professors, who asked not to be named citing the sensitivity of the situation, expressed similar views to GBH News.
Johnson said Summers should be barred from campus if it is found he violated institutional rules by continuing to seek donations from Epstein after the university asked him and his wife to stop.
“Right now, I think we have a great deal of evidence that Summers is a cad and a loose cannon,” Johnson said.
