Tell Harvard to suspend professor Larry Summers while it investigates his Epstein ties.

The petition to Harvard University President Alan Garber reads:

Anyone who knows of or enables child sex trafficking must be held accountable. Suspend economics professor Lawrence 'Larry' Summers immediately while your institution investigates his ties to the late serial child sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein.

Thanks to the courage, strength, and persistence of a thousand survivors, the names of powerful men who participated in and enabled Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell's child abuse and trafficking network are coming to light.

One of those men is Lawrence "Larry" Summers, a former treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton and a former president of Harvard University. Summers has also held key leadership roles in the Obama administration, the finance sector, and prominent tech companies like OpenAI. 

Summers, who has long held very harmful views on women and Black people, had a cozy relationship with Epstein. In fact, Summers continued asking Epstein for romantic advice and money for years, even after Epstein's horrendous crimes came to light. Summers has announced he is resigning from his public positions, and Harvard University has said it will launch an investigation into its affiliates' ties to Epstein. But Summers will continue to teach at Harvard. Any cover or credibility granted to Summers is completely unacceptable. 

Students shouldn't have to learn from a teacher like Summers, who has not only rubbed elbows with the most notorious child sex trafficker of our time but long held harmful views on women and Black people.

In 2002, while he was president of Harvard, Summers forced out the African American scholar Cornel West, after smearing West's scholarship and left-leaning politics, including West's ties to the civil rights and social justice-oriented Reverend Al Sharpton. "I said to myself, I am a free and self-respecting black man and I will not put up with that kind of attitude," West told the Harvard Crimson about leaving Harvard.

Also, while he was Harvard's president in 2005, Summers drew fire for stating that biological differences between men and women were the reason for men's overwhelming representation in the mathematics and sciences.

At the time, Summers and his allies simply doubled down on his comments and further gaslit women. Richard Freeman, an economist at Harvard and the London School of Economics, told the Guardian, "Some people took offence because they were very sensitive. It does not seem to me insane to think that men and women have biological differences."

Black people and women should not be subjected to Summers as a teacher. Harvard must suspend Summers while it investigates his ties to Epstein.