Harvard and the Rot

Larry Summers has not been fired by Harvard, and that tells you a lot about America in 2025.

Larry Summers, for those unaware, is a towering figure in neo-liberal academics and Democratic politics. He served in the Obama administration and is the effective head of the economic policy side of the centrist think tank Center for American politics. He was also the President of Harvard and is still a teacher and head of one of the center at Harvard’s Kennedy School. He is, in other words, a big deal. He is also all over the Epstein emails.

Now, that would be bad enough, but perhaps, given the context of the emails, not fireable. One could forgive a professional relationship, perhaps, centered on getting money from the creep for the school before the convictions. That is arguable at best, but that is also not what the emails show. Summers, writing after Epstein had been convicted, reached out to Epstein to ask his advice on how to get one of the women he is mentoring into bed. And yes, it really is that plain. The woman turned to Summers for professional mentorship and he reached out to a known sex offender for advice on how to sleep with her. It is egregious conduct, the kind that should get people fired. Yet Harvard has allowed Summers to merely step away from public appearances while he continues to teach, as if hiding from the press was a punishment rather than spin control.

To be clear, absolutely no female student or junior professor can be certain that Summers is dealing with her fairly. They always have to wonder if they are being judged on how much he wants to sleep with them. Every interaction requires them to wonder if their actions are being rewarded, or if they are being judged on their looks and perceived willingness to sleep with him. In the emails, Summers made it crystal clear that he was willing to use his power to get what he wanted:

Summers went on to describe what he saw as his “best shot”: that the woman finds him “invaluable and interesting” and concludes “she can’t have it without romance / sex.”

Summers cannot be trusted around women. He cannot be trusted to treat them fairly. He cannot be trusted to hire or promote them based on merit. He cannot be trusted to train men in his department to treat woman fairly. He cannot be trusted to NOT hire and promote men who have the same predatory, transactional relationship with their power over female students and employees as he demonstrates. And yet Harvard has not fired him, just as they did not fire him when he mused that women were inherently inferior at math. He has been protected by the institution and allowed to continue to hurt women. Why? Because powerful men, elites of all stripes, believe in one thing above all else: no one in their class should ever be held to account.

The focus on the Epstein emails has largely been on the fact that Trump was deeply involved with Epstein and almost certainly knew about at least some of Epstein’s activities, as it should. But the emails also show a world in which the elite felt comfortable dealing with him even after his conviction for sex crimes with a child. The complete lack of fall out for essentially anyone based on those revelations is the surest sign of the rot at the heart of America. We are ruled by people who look out for each other, no matter the offense, no matter the consequences. It is that rot that creates too big to fail and allows the worst people to stumble through the world, smashing up institutions and people in their wake, without consequence or penalty. An entire world based on the ideal that the little people’s lives don’t matter compared to the comfort of the elite.

Larry Summers continued employment just makes clear the assumptions of the ruling class — that evil is conditional, based on status and wealth and proximity to power. The more of those you have, they seem to think, the less evil you must be. Until, at the heights Summers and Trump operate it, you have so much power and wealth that you cannot, by definition, be evil at all. Any evidence to the contrary must be sour grapes or special pleading or the irritating cries of people who really should know their place. If they were capable of experiencing evil, then, surely, they would have Jeffery’s email.