{"id":197356,"date":"2025-11-24T09:12:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-24T09:12:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/197356\/"},"modified":"2025-11-24T09:12:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-24T09:12:10","slug":"an-intellectual-giants-extraordinary-fall-from-grace-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/197356\/","title":{"rendered":"an intellectual giant\u2019s extraordinary fall from grace \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sheryl Sandberg<\/a>\u2019s encomium to her mentor, Lawrence Summers, could hardly have been more effusive. The economist had always stuck by people, she said, even those facing public scrutiny and even when others would shrink from an association.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe never worried that he would somehow get dragged into someone else\u2019s mess,\u201d the former Meta<\/a> chief operating officer, who worked as Summers\u2019 chief of staff at the US treasury, told an event late last year to mark his 70th birthday. \u201cI know all of us here showed up for this day, because Larry has shown up for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

After the events of the past few days, Sandberg\u2019s words have a piquancy she could not have foreseen. Summers has found himself in perhaps the biggest mess of his life \u2013 much of it of his own making.<\/p>\n

Summers\u2019 reputation has been in tatters ever since a trove of emails released by Congress last week showed him asking the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein<\/a> for advice on pursuing an extramarital relationship with a woman mentee.<\/p>\n

This week he announced he would step away from his public commitments, resigning from the board of OpenAI and from roles at think tanks such as the Budget Lab at Yale and the Brookings Institution. On Wednesday he said he had taken leave from teaching at Harvard University<\/a>, where he has been a tenured professor since 1983.<\/p>\n

Summers, who used to write for the Financial Times, declined a request for an interview. But he issued a public statement on Monday saying he was \u201cdeeply ashamed\u201d of his actions, and took \u201cfull responsibility for my misguided decision to continue communicating with Mr Epstein\u201d.<\/p>\n

Friends and colleagues have been shocked that he appeared to have such a cosy relationship with the convicted sex offender until as late as March 2019 \u2013 just months before Epstein\u2019s arrest and death. <\/p>\n

\u201cGetting involved with Epstein and asking for advice from him is insane,\u201d said one person who has known him for years. \u201cLike a lot of brilliant but flawed people, he just falls into traps.\u201d<\/p>\n

Others said it was typical of his hubris. \u201cNobody writes things like that in an email unless they think they\u2019re untouchable,\u201d said one economist who knows him. \u201cWhich he has been \u2013 for a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0\u2018Deeply ashamed\u2019 Larry Summers steps back from public life over Epstein linksOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

It has been an extraordinary fall from grace for a man admired as one of the US\u2019s leading public intellectuals and economic elder statesmen, equally at home in the worlds of politics, academia and high finance, whose opinions on the crisis du jour were heeded around the globe.<\/p>\n

\u201cOver the last several decades, he has been one of the most influential public voices on consequential matters of US and international economic policy,\u201d Timothy Geithner, who was treasury secretary during Barack Obama\u2019s presidency, told the Financial Times.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe has shown moral courage in his consistent willingness to say tough things on many of the hard questions of our time. Often inconvenient for those in the administrations of both parties, and more valuable for that willingness to cause discomfort.\u201d<\/p>\n

But critics have long bemoaned his outsize influence and what they see as a reluctance to brook dissent. \u201cIt\u2019s not just that he\u2019s abrasive \u2013 it\u2019s that he steamrollers people who disagree with him,\u201d said one economist. \u201cHe\u2019s a bully who is very good at just shutting down debate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some claim the correspondence with Epstein has exposed a deep current of sexism. Jonathan Parker, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), said Summers\u2019 \u201ccreepy abuse of his professional power\u201d was \u201cinfuriating\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis behaviour shrinks women\u2019s networks and harms their careers,\u201d he wrote on X. \u201cAnd maybe fewer women walk through my door for advice or to chat about life as well as economics. Such a record of stupidity from this man.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"LawrenceLawrence Summers: his detractors say his blunt manner was never a good fit for Harvard. File photograph: Michael Dwyer\/AP <\/p>\n

Certainly, this is not the first time Summers has been embroiled in scandal. There was the speech he gave in 2005, while president of Harvard, blaming the underrepresentation of women in tenured positions in science and engineering on \u201cdifferent availability of aptitude at the high end\u201d. The suggestion that there were innate differences in men and women\u2019s cognitive abilities triggered a large backlash.<\/p>\n

Summers apologised. But he was already on thin ice after a high-profile feud with Cornel West, a professor of African-American studies. Harvard\u2019s faculty of arts and sciences voted no confidence in him in 2005 and the following year he announced his resignation as the university\u2019s president.<\/p>\n

His detractors say Summers\u2019 blunt manner was never a good fit for Harvard. \u201cHe lacks empathy, and can\u2019t read the room,\u201d said the person who has known him for years. \u201cAt Harvard, he was just a bull in a china shop.\u201d<\/p>\n

There have been other controversies, too. In the 1990s he got into trouble after it emerged that a memo written by a subordinate and signed by him while he was chief economist at the World Bank said the best place to dump toxic waste was in poor countries, where lifespans were already short.<\/p>\n

Summers, who said he had not read the memo, later told a Senate committee that it was satirical and \u201cnever intended … as a serious policy recommendation\u201d. The scandal scuppered his hopes of being named to run president Bill Clinton\u2019s council of economic advisers.<\/p>\n

\u201cI liked Larry personally but came to believe his judgment was terrible,\u201d Robert Reich, labour secretary under Clinton, wrote in his recently published memoir Coming up Short.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Larry Summers, former US Treasury secretary, slammed Trump in Epstein emailsOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Still, few would question his brilliance as an economist. The nephew of two Nobel laureates in economics, he became a tenured professor at Harvard while still in his 20s and later won the prestigious John Bates Clark medal, given to American economists under 40.<\/p>\n

After his stint at the World Bank, he joined the government, working as treasury secretary Robert Rubin\u2019s deputy in the Clinton administration. The two were credited for the administration\u2019s response to financial crises in Mexico, Asia and Russia and for presiding over the 1990s boom in the US economy.<\/p>\n

In 1999, Time ran a cover story describing the two men, together with Alan Greenspan, the then Fed chairman, as the \u201cCommittee to Save the World\u201d. It was around this time that former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger reportedly said Summers should be given a permanent office in the West Wing so the president could ask him anything. <\/p>\n

Colleagues were impressed by his rigour, his argumentativeness and willingness to challenge orthodoxies. Geithner said he first met Summers while working as a civil servant in the treasury department during the 1990s when he would \u201cmake me explain the established policy on any given issue\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cInevitably, he\u2019d respond with something like, \u2018whatever you mandarins of the treasury think, this policy is not at the frontier of knowledge . . We need to bring the policy closer to that frontier,\u2019\u201d Geithner said.<\/p>\n

But Summers\u2019 legacy remains contested. Critics cite his support for financial deregulation, including the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which had separated commercial and investment banking.<\/p>\n

\"LarryLarry Summers in Trinity College in 2019 to receive an award from the university\u2019s philosophical society. Photograph: Dara Mac Donaill <\/p>\n

\u201cHe opened the door for the disaster we had in the financial crisis,\u201d said Dean Baker, a macroeconomist and co-founder of the Centre for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR).<\/p>\n

While at the treasury department in the 1990s he also opposed efforts by Brooksley Born, chairwoman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, to increase oversight of over-the-counter financial derivatives. Summers told Congress that such a move would \u201ccast a shadow of regulatory uncertainty over an otherwise thriving market\u201d.<\/p>\n

After his stint at Harvard, he re-entered government, serving as director of the National Economic Council under Obama. He played a key role in the policies that stabilised the economy after the 2008 financial crisis, including the $787 billion stimulus package, bank rescue and restructuring of automakers.<\/p>\n

But his hopes of scaling another summit of policymaking were dashed. In 2013, Summers had aspired to become chairman of the Federal Reserve. But liberal Democrats opposed his nomination, citing his record on financial regulation in the 1990s, his ties to Wall Street and his confrontational leadership style.<\/p>\n

Summers had left the White House in 2010 but continued to intervene in policy debates. In 2013 he argued the US and other advanced economies were facing \u201csecular stagnation\u201d \u2013 a prolonged period of insufficient demand. Many economists subsequently agreed with him.<\/p>\n

It is unclear whether he can sustain this role in the wake of the Epstein emails. For some, his retreat from public life is a big loss. \u201cHe\u2019s a polymath,\u201d said one author whom he mentored at Harvard. \u201cHe helped me a lot, and there\u2019s a lot of other people who would say the same.\u201d<\/p>\n

Others think it might be too early to write him off altogether. \u201cHe\u2019s like a cat with nine lives,\u201d said the critical economist. \u201cHe\u2019ll be back.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u2013 Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2025<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sheryl Sandberg\u2019s encomium to her mentor, Lawrence Summers, could hardly have been more effusive. The economist had always…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":197357,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,13,14,6,15098,11,12,109567,15,16,5,7,8,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-197356","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-featured-news","11":"tag-featurednews","12":"tag-headlines","13":"tag-jeffrey-epstein","14":"tag-latest-news","15":"tag-latestnews","16":"tag-lawrence-summers","17":"tag-main-news","18":"tag-mainnews","19":"tag-news","20":"tag-top-stories","21":"tag-topstories","22":"tag-world","23":"tag-world-news","24":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115603907892829728","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197356\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/197357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}