Harvard Will Open a New Inquiry Into Faculty Ties to Epstein

The university is reviewing newly released emails between the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and Lawrence H. Summers, a former Harvard president, and others at the institution.

Harvard has started a new review of ties that its former president, Lawrence H. Summers, and others at the institution had with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, according to the university.

The school will examine a newly released batch of Mr. Epstein’s emails that include communications with Mr. Summers and others, The Boston Globe and The Harvard Crimson first reported.

“The university is conducting a review of information concerning individuals at Harvard included in the newly released Jeffrey Epstein documents to evaluate what actions may be warranted,” a Harvard spokesman, Jason Newton, said.

Through a spokeswoman, Mr. Summers declined to comment about the review.

Harvard released a report in 2020 about Mr. Epstein’s ties to the university, and Mr. Summers’s relationship with him was previously known. But the emails released last week show that Mr. Summers had corresponded regularly with Mr. Epstein for years, suggesting a far more intimate relationship than was previously known.

The new batch of emails include exchanges in 2015 between Mr. Epstein and Summers’ wife, Elisa New, a Harvard literature professor emeritus, in which Ms. New expresses gratitude for a donation arranged by Mr. Epstein: “Finally, Jeffrey, you have been such a wonderful supporter of my Poetry in America project. The Leon Black gift changed everything for me last year.”

She added, “The gift woke up the Deans to the importance of Harvard’s role in producing the highest quality humanities content for the WORLD.”

In a statement on Wednesday, Ms. New wrote that she regretted accepting Mr. Epstein’s donation and staying in contact with him.

“After learning about the extent and horrific nature of his crimes and actions, I made a personal donation in 2019 to an organization actively involved in combating sex trafficking in an amount exceeding Mr. Epstein’s donation to my nonprofit,” she said.

Harvard in September 2019 announced it would hire an outside lawyer to investigate the university’s long and extensive relationship with Mr. Epstein, who had died in jail that August in what was ruled a suicide.

The review found that Harvard had accepted $9.1 million in gifts from Mr. Epstein between 1998 and 2007, according to the 2020 findings of the investigation. Mr. Epstein was convicted and jailed in 2008 for sex charges involving a minor. He was released in 2009, and had to register as a sex offender.

Then-Harvard President Drew G. Faust decided by 2008 that Harvard would take no more money from Mr. Epstein, according to the findings of the investigators.

The university’s connections with Mr. Epstein were not only financial. The review found that Harvard in 2005 admitted Mr. Epstein as a visiting fellow in the psychology department and readmitted him the following year. And the review concluded “it is likely” that Mr. Epstein visited Harvard more than 40 times after his release from jail, between 2010 and 2018.

The investigative findings from 2020 do not mention the poetry gift arranged by Mr. Epstein for Ms. New discussed in the newly released emails.

Separately, investigators wrote that they were aware that one of Mr. Epstein’s foundations reported on tax filings in 2016 that it had donated $110,000 to a nonprofit organization of which Ms. New was president, the report says. Because the gift was not to Harvard, investigators did not examine it.

Lawmakers released more than 23,000 documents last week that belonged to Mr. Epstein, including emails and messages from many years before he died in prison in 2019. They show that he and Mr. Summers often exchanged messages in 2017, 2018 and 2019, with Mr. Epstein sometimes offering advice about Mr. Summers’s relationship with a woman. The correspondence took place long after Mr. Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to prostitution-related charges.

In some of the emails, Mr. Summers, who was married to Ms. New at the time, leaned on Mr. Epstein as a confidant. In November 2018, they discussed a woman whom Mr. Summers said he was pursuing, but who did not appear to be interested in him romantically.

“I think for now I’m going nowhere with her except economic mentor,” Mr. Summers wrote. “I think I’m right now seen very warmly in rear view mirror category.”

The emails were released last week. Mr. Summers, a former Treasury secretary who was Harvard’s president from 2001 to 2006, said in a statement on Monday that he was “deeply ashamed” and would be stepping back from public commitments. Several institutions that he works with, including the Yale Budget Lab and the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning advocacy group, said that he would be ending his affiliations there.

Mr. Summers said that he would continue teaching economics at Harvard, where he holds the title of university professor, the institution’s highest faculty position. On Tuesday, Mr. Summers taught his globalization class and held office hours for students, a spokeswoman for Mr. Summers confirmed.

On Wednesday, a spokeswoman for Mr. Summers confirmed that he would be stepping down from the board of OpenAI.

Mr. Summers is also a contributing writer for The New York Times’s Opinion section on a one-year contract that started in January. A Times spokesman said on Tuesday that Mr. Summers’s contract would not be renewed.

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