Harvard University placed mathematics professor Martin Nowak on paid administrative leave because of his connections to disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The move happened a day after Larry Summers, Harvard president emeritus and a University Professor, the highest faculty rank at the school, announced he would retire at the end of the academic year.

Both men were revealed as being in frequent, friendly contact with Epstein by extensive records released by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) since November. Summers has faced extensive criticism and calls for his resignation and has been on leave since last semester.

Summers and Epstein exchanged hundreds of emails between the years of 2013 and 2019, all of which occurred after Epstein’s 2008 solicitation of prostitution with a minor conviction. Nowak, meanwhile, sent a total of 5,698 emails to Epstein’s email address, according to an analysis by The Economist, making him the financier’s ninth most frequent correspondent.

Many of the messages sent by Nowak include requests for meetings or phone calls from Epstein and arrangements for travel plans, including multiple invitations for Epstein to join Nowak at Harvard. During an impromptu trip Epstein took to Boston in October of 2011, Nowak told a staffer of Epstein’s (whose name was redacted in the files released by the DOJ) that Epstein was invited to sit in on a lecture to students.

 

please tell jeffrey that i am teaching my class from 2:30-4:00
he can attend
it’s fun!

– Message from Nowak to unnamed Epstein staffer (accessed via Jmail)

 

Epstein also frequently used office space at Harvard’s Program for Evolutionary Dynamics (PED), which was led by Nowak, 60. According to a 2020 report, Epstein gave PED a $6.5 million donation in 2003. According to the DOJ files, Epstein was using Nowak’s office at the PED to take meetings as recently as December of 2018 – within a year of Epstein’s death.

Several of Nowak’s final emails to Epstein and his staffers were requests for references to PED to be removed from the website for Epstein’s nonprofit. They were sent less than two months before Epstein’s second arrest in July of 2019.

 

Dear Lesley

Did you make progress to removing PED from the website?

The sooner the better please.

Things arc getting very strange hcrc.

It would also help us if you could briefly inactivate the website until it is rewritten.

Many many thanks
Martin

– Message from Nowak to Epstein staffer Lesley Groff on May 10, 2019 at 1:30 PM (accessed via Jmail)

 

Harvard closed PED in 2021 in association with the scandal.

Hopi Hoekstra, Dean of the Harvard Faculty of the Arts and Sciences (FAS) announced Nowak’s leave in an email sent yesterday.

“New information about Professor Nowak has come to light as part of the University’s review of documents released by the U.S. Department of Justice regarding Jeffrey Epstein,” said Hoesktra’s email. “A panel of the FAS Faculty Conduct Committee (FCC) reviewed this information and recommended that FAS conduct a formal investigation to determine whether Professor Nowak violated FAS or University policies and standards of professional conduct.”

Nowak did not respond to a request for comment from Cambridge Day.

In the case of Summers, the content of the emails ranged from academic to deeply personal; in one exchange, Summers appears to ask Epstein for relationship advice regarding an unnamed woman. Four months after their correspondence concluded, Epstein was arrested by federal agents for the sex trafficking of minors. Epstein was found dead in his New York prison cell in August of 2019 from what was ruled as a suicide.

The 71-year-old former U.S. Treasury secretary, in a statement to the Harvard Crimson, called the decision to step aside “difficult.” He indicated he would remain involved in the Harvard community. “Free of formal responsibility, as President Emeritus and a retired professor, I look forward in time to engaging in research, analysis, and commentary on a range of global economic issues,” he said.

Summers also resigned from his role as the co-director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

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