Epstein Resignations Rock the Academic World, Including Harvard Director and Nobel Laureate

Much of the attention related to the ongoing fallout of the release of the Epstein files has understandably been on political figures such as Donald Trump (whose most damaging files may be mysteriously absent) or England’s Prince Andrew, who recently became easily the highest profile arrest connected to association with Jeffrey Epstein to date. The entertainment world has likewise been roiled by Epstein turmoil, be it influential entertainment exec and 2028 Olympics committee chairman Casey Wasserman stepping down from his namesake agency, or tycoon Richard Branson downplaying his own long relationship with the infamous financier, recently detailed in a Paste Magazine investigation. But the academic world has perhaps seen even more widespread resignations tied to Epstein association, including two more high profile figures stepping down today: Harvard teacher (and former university president) Larry Summers, and Columbia scientist and Nobel Prize winner Dr. Richard Axel. They join several other prominent academics to resign this month after the release of the files.

Former Treasury secretary and former Harvard President Larry Summers will reportedly leave his current teaching position and role as the director of Harvard’s Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at the end of the academic year, after saying in the fall that he was “stepping back from public life” amid revelations related to his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. Summers has not been formally accused of criminal wrongdoing, but he garnered waves of criticism after emails released by the House Oversight Committee showed that he had sought Epstein’s advice about pursuing a romantic relationship with a person he described as his own mentee, just before Epstein’s 2019 arrest. He’d even visited Epstein’s infamous private island with his wife, Elisa New, during the couple’s honeymoon in 2005. Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren (MA), herself a former Harvard professor, had called on the university to sever ties with Summers.

“I am deeply ashamed of my actions and recognize the pain they have caused,” Summers said to POLITICO in the fall, while “stepping back” from public life. “I take full responsibility for my misguided decision to continue communicating with Mr. Epstein.”

The disappearance of Larry Summers from public life cannot happen fast enough.

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— Elizabeth Spiers (@espiers.bsky.social) Feb 25, 2026 at 3:06 PM

Nobel laureate Richard Axel, 79, has been a Columbia professor for 53 years and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2004 with Linda B. Buck for research related to odorant receptors and the human olfactory system. Currently, he was teaching and serving as the co-director of Columbia’s Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, which employs more than a dozen researchers. Axel announced today that he would be resigning from that post and from the university to focus on his own research, while also resigning as an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Like Summers, Axel is not directly accused of wrongdoing in the Epstein files, but they detail a long relationship between the two stretching all the way back to the 1980s. According to The New York Times, Axel was “a frequent guest of Mr. Epstein’s at his Manhattan home,” and “he also served as an intermediary on Mr. Epstein’s behalf with Columbia officials involved in admissions and philanthropy.” The same article details how Dr. Axel attempted to use his influence to help associates of Epstein gain admission to Columbia, and previously referred to Epstein as “extremely smart and probing,” among other things.

In a statement announcing that he would be resigning, Dr. Axel referred to his long association with Epstein as a “serious error in judgement” and said he was sorry for “compromising the trust of my friends, students and colleagues.”

“What has emerged about Epstein’s appalling conduct, the harm that he has caused to so many people, makes my association with him all the more painful and inexcusable,” reads the statement. Columbia University said in its own statement that it agreed with the decision for Dr. Axel to step down, given the “continued fallout from the release of the D.O.J. files.”

Nobel Prize-winning brain scientist, Richard Axel, resigned from his post co-leading Columbia University’s Mind Brain Behavioral Institute because of his long ties to #Epstein

So many men have stepped down from their positions, but where are the arrests?

— PINO FOTUS (@pino-fotus.bsky.social) Feb 25, 2026 at 3:15 PM

Summers and Axel join other, recent resignations or suspensions tied to the release of the Epstein files in the academic world, including the suspension of Yale professor computer science professor David Gelernter, and the resignation of School of Visual Arts curator and director David A. Ross.

Gelernter is one of the few figures mentioned in the Epstein files who more or less didn’t disavow anything–despite sending a female Yale senior Epstein’s way and describing her as a “v small good-looking blonde” in their communications, he claimed afterward that he was merely trying to help the woman get the job by taking advantage of Epstein’s well-known interest in women. Gelernter also scheduled visits with Epstein in various locales. In 2009, a year after Epstein pleaded guilty to two felony prostitution charges in Florida and was given a sweetheart deal, Gelernter wrote to literary agent John Brockman about Epstein in glowing terms.

“I can’t believe anyone anywhere could be more of a character than Jeff Epstein,” Gelernter wrote at the time in December 2009. “I’ve never talked to a more interesting guy or one w/ more all-around horsepower & faster acceleration.”

David A. Ross, meanwhile, left his job at the School of Visual Arts in New York after his own lengthy friendship with Epstein was revealed. He had been the chair of the MFA art practice program. In one exchange with Epstein in 2009, the financier and pedophile reportedly suggested the concept of an exhibition called “Statutory” that he said would feature “girls and boys ages 14-25 where they look nothing like their true ages.” Around the same time, Ross told Epstein in an email that “I’m still proud to call you a friend.”

It increasingly seems as if no corner of the entertainment, real estate, political, financial or academic worlds has been left untouched by the revelations found in the Epstein files. It all begs the question: Will we ever follow the lead of the United Kingdom and progress to arrests?