WASHINGTON (AP) — Larry Summers was once so powerful that he was dubbed a member of the Committee to Save the World. Now, he's increasingly a man in exile.
Summers took leave from his teaching post at Harvard University on Wednesday following the release of emails last week that showed he maintained a friendly relationship with Jeffrey Epstein long after the financier pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution from an underage girl in 2008.
The 70-year-old
Summers, a former U.S. treasury secretary and onetime contender to lead the Federal Reserve, was already beginning to withdraw from public life in the wake of the email release. But his decision to pause teaching at the university where he was once president was particularly notable for someone who was a leading — and sometimes controversial — figure in Washington and academia.
Here's what to know about Summers.
The emails made public last week showed many in Epstein's network of friends, including Summers, remained in touch long after his 2008 guilty plea. A 2019 email to Epstein showed Summers discussing interactions he had with a woman, writing: “I said what are you up to. She said ‘I’m busy’. I said awfully coy u are.”
Epstein, who often wrote with spelling and grammatical errors, replied: “you reacted well.. annoyed shows caring. , no whining showed strentgh.”
When asked about the emails last week, Summers issued a statement saying he has “great regrets in my life” and his association with Epstein was a “major error in judgement.”
Epstein killed himself in a Manhattan jail while awaiting trial in 2019 on charges he sexually abused and trafficked underage girls.
President Donald Trump, who has also faced questions about his relationship with Epstein, asked the Justice Department and the FBI to investigate the Epstein ties of Summers and other prominent Democrats, including former President Bill Clinton and donor Reid Hoffman. U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi has said she has ordered a top federal prosecutor to lead that probe just months after her department announced it had no sufficient basis for further investigations into Epstein associates.
In the wake of last week's email release, Summers’ office said he would resign from the board of OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT. Representatives of the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank, and the Budget Lab at Yale also confirmed Summers was no longer connected to their organizations.
In economic circles, Summers was already well known by the time Clinton moved into the White House in 1993. He was one of the youngest academics to be awarded tenure at Harvard when he was 28, and he went on to hold a top role at the World Bank.
But his national profile rose during the Clinton administration, when he held senior jobs at the Treasury Department. As deputy treasury secretary, he was a key figure in the U.S. effort to contain a financial crisis that spread through Asia. That spurred his appearance on the cover of Time magazine alongside then-Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan. The trio were famously called the Committee to Save the World, reflecting the aura that surrounded many U.S. economic leaders at the time.
Summers was Clinton's final treasury secretary during a period when a deregulatory fervor swept through both parties in Washington. He was among the Democrats who backed legislation that erased or eroded many financial regulations that had governed Wall Street since the Great Depression — a position that would later put Summers in a tough spot.
With Democrats out of the White House, Summers returned to Harvard in 2001 as the university's president. His tenure was defined by tumult, particularly in the wake of a 2005 speech at a conference about improving diversity in science and engineering. He suggested that women were less represented in those fields because of “intrinsic aptitude.”
The comments were derided as sexist. Summers stepped down as Harvard president at the end of the 2006 academic year amid disputes with faculty and the fallout from the comments about women.
By the time Summers returned to Washington in 2009, the U.S. was in the midst of the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression. President Barack Obama tapped him to be director of the National Economic Council. But he was viewed skeptically by many Democrats, particularly those from the party's ascendant progressive wing, who blamed Summers for helping create the financial instability. They argued that he was among those who backed the deregulation legislation that swept away many of the guardrails on the banking system.
Even Clinton told ABC News in 2010 that while he took responsibility for signing the deregulation legislation, he thought Summers and Rubin were wrong in urging him to opt against regulating derivatives. The complex financial instruments were blamed for contributing to the financial instability.
Summers remained close with Obama, who strongly considered him to succeed Ben Bernanke as Fed chair. But the comments about women and the criticism of his role in financial deregulation proved too much to overcome in the Senate, where it was clear he would not be confirmed.
Summers withdrew from consideration and Obama ultimately nominated Janet Yellen as the first female leader of the central bank.
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Associated Press writers Kimberlee Kruesi and Rodrique Ngowi contributed to this report.
