Larry Summers leaving positions at Harvard and OpenAI after Epstein emails

(Reuters) – Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers is stepping down from a teaching post at Harvard University and as a director of one of its business and government schools, a spokesperson said on Wednesday, after Congress released documents showing Summers shared close ties with late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Earlier on Wednesday, Summers said he was resigning from the OpenAI board, and Harvard said it was conducting a review of people mentioned in files connected with Epstein.

A spokesperson for Summers, Steven Goldberg, said Summers’ co-teachers would complete the semester for three ongoing courses.

“Mr. Summers has decided it’s in the best interest of the Center for him to go on leave from his role as Director as Harvard undertakes its review,” he said.

Summers, also a former president of Harvard University, is a director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Summers has been under fire since the U.S. House Oversight Committee released documents detailing an ongoing personal correspondence between Summers and Epstein, who was found hanged in a Manhattan prison in 2019 as he faced sex-trafficking charges.

Summers said on Monday he would step back from all public commitments, adding that the move was to allow him “to rebuild trust and repair relationships with the people closest to me.”

(Reporting by Daniel Trotta in Carlsbad, California; Editing by Kate Mayberry)