by Dhruv T. Patel and Cam N. Srivastava
The Harvard Crimson
November 17, 2025
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025 ... as-mentee/
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Former Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers processes into the University's 2018 Commencement ceremony. The former Treasury secretary remained in contact with convicted sex offender Jeffrey E. Epstein until the day before Epstein's arrest in 2019. By Amy Y. Li
When former Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers was pursuing a romantic relationship with a woman he described as a mentee, he sought guidance from a longtime associate: convicted sex offender Jeffrey E. Epstein.
In a sequence of texts and emails between November 2018 and July 5, 2019, Summers turned to Epstein for advice on his pursuit of the woman. Epstein was quick to chime in with assurance and suggestions, describing himself in one November 2018 message as Summers’ “wing man.”
The messages became public after House Republicans released more than 20,000 files from the Epstein estate on Wednesday. Summers’ correspondence with Epstein, a financier who pled guilty to soliciting prostitution from a minor in 2008, ends just one day before Epstein was arrested on new sex trafficking charges.
Together, the messages show Summers — who served as Treasury Secretary under former United States President Bill Clinton — placing an extraordinary degree of trust in Epstein, asking him for help in navigating a relationship that blurred the boundaries of his professional and personal lives.
Summers, who has been married since 2005, told Epstein he thought the woman was reluctant to leave him because she valued his professional connections. Epstein told him in one June 2019 text, “She is doomed to be with you.”
“Think for now I’m going nowhere with her except economics mentor,” Summers wrote in November 2018. “I think I’m right now in the seen very warmly in rear view mirror category.”
“She must be very confused or maybe wants to cut me off but wants professional connection a lot and so holds to it,” Summers wrote in a March 2019 exchange to Epstein, explaining why he believed she continued to engage with him despite tensions.
A spokesperson for Summers said that the woman described in the exchanges was never Summers’ student, but declined to comment further for this article.
In at least some of his exchanges with Epstein on the relationship, Summers appears to refer to macroeconomist Keyu Jin ’04, a tenured professor at the London School of Economics at the time, who is mentioned in a series of late 2018 messages between the two men.
In one, Summers forwarded Epstein an email from Jin asking for feedback on a paper. Summers mused to Epstein that it was “probably appropriate” to hold off on responding.
“She’s already begining to sound needy
nice,” Epstein replied.Jin, who earned her bachelor’s degree and Ph.D. at Harvard between 2000 and 2009, declined to comment on the months of messages between Summers and Epstein. In the messages released by the House, she does not refer to a romantic relationship with Summers. It is not clear whether she was aware that Summers shared her emails or discussed her with Epstein.
Throughout the seven months of correspondence reviewed by The Crimson, Summers and Epstein referred to the woman Summers was pursuing in some messages by the code name “peril” but never used her name in messages directly describing the relationship. On at least two occasions, the two men discussed Jin’s emails to Summers, which he forwarded to Epstein. In later messages, the two men appeared to joke about the probability that Summers would have sex with the woman, apparently Jin.
Summers’ long relationship with Epstein has been well documented, but the depth of their conversations, including over intimate matters, became public only this week. He traveled on Epstein’s private airplane on at least four occasions, including at least three times while serving as president of Harvard. Summers also met more than a dozen times with him and solicited donations from the disgraced financier for his wife, Harvard English professor emerita Elisa New. The messages released Wednesday show Summers organizing visits to Harvard on Epstein’s behalf and discussing contributions for New’s work.
“I have great regrets in my life,” Summers wrote in a Wednesday statement to The Crimson. “As I have said before, my association with Jeffrey Epstein was a major error of judgement.”
The exchanges concerning Jin’s messages and Summers’ relationship began shortly before a November 2018 investigation from the Miami Herald surfaced accusations from 80 girls and women that Epstein had abused them between 2001 and 2006, drawing on court records and interviews. Summers continued to correspond with Epstein about his relationship even after the Department of Justice opened an investigation in February 2019 into Epstein’s 2008 plea deal.
Wednesday’s documents also revealed messages where Summers, whose speculation that innate differences between men and women could drive women’s underrepresentation in science contributed to the end of his Harvard presidency in 2006, joked about women’s intelligence and what he described as excessive penalties for men who “hit on” women in the workplace.
In an October 2017 email to Epstein, Summers retread the same terrain that had proven treacherous for him in the past, writing that he “observed that half the IQ in world was possessed by women without mentioning they are more than 51 percent of population….”
Summers has continued to teach at Harvard since, interrupted by brief stints in Washington, and currently holds Harvard’s highest faculty distinction as a University Professor. This semester, he is teaching two large undergraduate courses and one graduate class.
The first interactions between Summers and Epstein on his relationship with the woman — apparently Jin — appear in late November and early December 2018, when she and Summers seem to have met during an academic conference. For two days, Summers sent Epstein updates on his interactions with her.
On Dec. 1, Summers wrote that the woman had been “interested in my commentary on her outfits” and said he had “referenced your having figured us out” — suggesting Summers told her that Epstein was aware of their relationship.
Summers described his feelings as conflicted in the messages to Epstein, writing in remarkably candid terms.
“When I’m reflective I think I’m dodging a bullet,” he wrote. “Think right thing is to cut off contact. Suspect she will miss it. Problem is I will too.”
The next morning, Summers struck a different tone: “Game day at conference she was extremely good Smart Assertive and clear Gorgeous. I’m fucked.”
In messages from later that month, Summers and Epstein discussed Summers’ relationship with Jin’s father, a former high-ranked Chinese Communist Party official and the founding president of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, who Summers had long been close with.
When Jin emailed Summers on Dec. 22 to thank him for his support of her and her father — minutes after she sent Summers an outline of an academic paper — Summers forwarded the exchange to Epstein, explaining that he had recently “sent a comment in mtg w her father flattering her father and saying other China officials had flattered him as well.”
Summers continued to detail his interactions with the woman — who appears to be Jin but is not named in the Epstein emails after December 2018 — throughout March 2019, now expressing frustration that she was canceling or shortening plans and appeared to be interested in another man.
“I think she is tired of this alas. Sustaining w secrecy hard,” he wrote.
The final tranche of messages, beginning in mid-June, shows the relationship still unresolved and Summers again turning to Epstein for guidance on how to pursue it. Summers asked Epstein whether it was “meaningful” to discuss the probability of “my getting horizontal w peril,” drawing parallels to forecasting Trump’s reelection.
“U r better at understanding Chinese women than at probability theory,” Summers told Epstein. The two men bantered about probability and mathematics, but repeatedly steered the conversation back to Summers’ relationship.
Epstein joked that “the probability of you in bed again with peril” was “0,” before reversing course and assuring Summers that “she is never ever going to find another Larry summers. Probability ZERO.”
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.”
Throughout June, Summers fed Epstein updates about the woman’s workload and continued contact. Epstein urged him to play the “long game” and keep her in what he called a “forced holding pattern.”
The final messages, dated July 5, 2019, show Summers still in regular contact with Epstein. That morning, Summers wrote he was in Cape Cod with his family — “Bit of an Ibsen play,” he joked — and the two men exchanged a brief flurry of literary one-liners.
The thread ends at 1:27 p.m.
Epstein was arrested the next day.
—Staff writer Dhruv T. Patel can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on X @dhruvtkpatel.
—Staff writer Cam N. Srivastava can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on X @camsrivastava.
