Harvard University’s former president Larry Summers will resign from the school over his ties to Jeffrey Epstein, as the scandal increasingly ensnares figures in academia.
A Nobel Prize-winning scientist quit Columbia’s brain institute, and Bill Gates apologized to his foundation’s staff, over friendships with the sex offender.
Epstein courted celebrities, power brokers, and politicians, but newly released files reveal the extent of academics in his orbit.
Many said they only turned to Epstein for fund raising, underscoring the unsavory private sources schools sometimes solicit.
Epstein’s motivations for cultivating brilliant minds — he maintained a list of top scientists — aren’t clear, but he may have “sought to leverage academia’s reputation to clean up his own,” The New York Times wrote.