Larry Summers, the former Treasury Secretary who has been a fixture at Harvard for half a century, is walking away. He resigned Wednesday as co-director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at Harvard Kennedy School, a position he held since 2011. He will stop teaching at the end of the academic year, will accept no new advisees, and will remain on leave until the end of the year.

The reason is not a mystery. In November, a trove of emails surfaced detailing a long-running personal relationship between Summers and the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey E. Epstein. The two corresponded about women, politics, and Harvard-related initiatives for at least seven years. The contact continued as late as July 2019, the day before Epstein's final arrest.

Summers called the decision "difficult" in a statement to The Crimson, Harvard's student newspaper.

Free of formal responsibility, as President Emeritus and a retired professor, I look forward in time to engaging in research, analysis, and commentary on a range of global economic issues.

That's a man describing a quiet retirement, not answering for seven years of correspondence with one of the most notorious predators in modern American history.

What the Emails Revealed

The emails did not land softly. According to Newsmax, they showed Summers and Epstein exchanging messages about women, politics, and Harvard-related initiatives over at least seven years. That timeline matters. It means the relationship persisted well beyond the point where Epstein's conduct was publicly known, well beyond the point where any serious person should have severed contact.

The final exchange came the day before Epstein's last arrest. Not months before. Not years before. The day before.

Summers said he is "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." A gracious exit line. But gratitude toward colleagues does not address the substance of what those emails contained or why the relationship endured as long as it did.

The Establishment Playbook

There is a familiar choreography when powerful people get caught in the gravity of a scandal like this. First comes silence. Then comes a curated resignation dressed up as a personal choice. Then comes the pivot to "the next chapter," framed in language so forward-looking that it obscures the reason anyone is talking about them in the first place.

Summers is executing this playbook flawlessly. He steps down from his formal roles. He retains his titles: President Emeritus, retired professor. He signals that he will continue to opine on "global economic issues" from a comfortable distance. No accountability. No reckoning. Just a soft landing on a very thick cushion.

And Harvard, for its part, offered a spokesperson who confirmed the departures without elaboration. The institution that housed Summers for decades appears content to let this end quietly.

The Silence That Speaks

What Summers has not done is as telling as what he has. He has not explained the nature of his relationship with Epstein. He has not addressed what "corresponded about women" means in the context of a man whose entire criminal enterprise revolved around the exploitation of young women. He has not explained why he maintained contact until the eve of an arrest.

These are not unreasonable questions. They are, in fact, the only questions that matter.

The broader Epstein saga has exposed a rot running through the highest corridors of American institutional life. Universities, finance, government, philanthropy: every pillar of the establishment had people who knew Epstein, dined with Epstein, took his money, or simply looked the other way. The common thread is not ideology. It is proximity to power and the assumption that proximity to power means immunity from consequences.

Summers spent decades moving between Washington and Cambridge, occupying exactly the kind of rarefied space where a man like Epstein operated. Treasury Secretary under Clinton. President of Harvard. A permanent fixture in the network of credentialed elites who shape policy and opinion from a handful of zip codes.

That network protected its own for years. It is still protecting them now, just more quietly.

A Quiet Exit Is Still an Exit

The American public has watched a parade of powerful names surface in connection with Epstein and then watched most of those names slide back into comfortable obscurity. No consequences. No answers. Just the soft hum of institutional machinery smoothing over the uncomfortable parts.

Summers leaves Harvard the way he arrived: credentialed, connected, and insulated. The emails are public. The questions remain unanswered. And a fifty-year tenure at one of the world's most prestigious universities ends not with a reckoning, but with a statement to a student newspaper.

That tells you everything about how accountability works when the people involved have the right titles.