Former US Treasury Secretary and former Harvard University President Larry Summers has resigned from OpenAI’s board of directors following renewed scrutiny over his past correspondence with the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Summers announced earlier this week that he would step away from all public engagements to “rebuild trust and repair relationships with the people closest to me.” His decision comes after the US House Oversight Committee released documents detailing extensive communication between him and Epstein.
A spokesperson for Harvard University, where Summers currently serves as a professor, confirmed Wednesday that the institution will open a new investigation into the people mentioned in documents related to Epstein. The spokesperson did not name Summers directly.
The OpenAI board of directors acknowledged his resignation in a brief statement, saying: “Larry has decided to resign from the OpenAI board of directors and we respect his decision. We appreciate his many contributions and the perspective he brought to the board.”
Summers’ resignation also follows a near-unanimous vote by the Republican-controlled US Congress to force the release of the Justice Department’s files on Epstein, a move that President Donald Trump had long resisted before reversing his stance. Trump recently ordered the Justice Department to investigate alleged ties between Epstein and several prominent Democrats, attempting to divert attention from his own past association with Epstein. Trump maintains that he was not involved in Epstein’s criminal activities.
The controversy surrounding Epstein has continued to be politically damaging for Trump, contributing to a decline in his approval ratings, which fell to 38% in the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll. Only 20% of those surveyed approve of his handling of the issue. Many of his supporters suspect that his administration concealed Epstein’s ties to influential figures and withheld information about Epstein’s 2019 death in a Manhattan jail, officially ruled a suicide.
Summers, a longtime Democratic figure, previously served as Treasury Secretary under former President Bill Clinton and then as director of the National Economic Council under former President Barack Obama. Several institutions, including the Peterson Institute for International Economics and the Center for American Progress, have confirmed that Summers will step away from his affiliations with them. The New York Times has also revealed that it will not renew its current contributor contract.
Summers joined OpenAI’s board of directors in late 2023 after the brief removal and reinstatement of the company’s CEO, Sam Altman. He also sits on several other corporate bodies, including educational technology company Skillsoft, of which he has been a member of the board of directors since 2021, and serves as president of Santander’s International Advisory Board.
READ MORE FROM: Newslodge