Awww, Larry Summers is caught up in the Epstein scandal? TOO FUCKING BAD

The BBQ Pit
1

I’m gonna go full-on Pit here, so don’t expect a lot of reasoned commentary or articulate reasoning. This is me unleashing vituperation I have felt for years. Here’s what I’d say to Larry Summers’s face if I could:

Larry Summers, you are an unmitigated asshole. The fact that your generic political views over the last few decades have been more or less tolerant/leftish/Democrat-friendly leaves me unmoved. The details matter, and the details reveal how rotten you are. Fuck you and your stunted views about women.

Before you were even prominent there, my experience as a Harvard student in the 1980s left me uneasy at best, disgusted at worst, regarding the university’s institutional attitudes toward women. Then you became the face of Harvard as its president, and you affirmed rather than corrected its sexism.

Your infamous 2005 speech suggesting that women might have “issues of intrinsic aptitude” (ie, are stupid compared to men) demonstrated how you eagerly affirmed those outmoded, scientifically-unsupported, views that females are intellectually inferior. It sadly affirmed, 20 years after I graduated, that Harvard was still a terrible place, feeding off its prestige while maintaining regressive attitudes toward women.

Today, in 2026, I am reading that you are resigning from your appointments at Harvard because your ties to Jeffrey Epstein have become public.

Boo fucking hoo. You claimed a few months ago to be “deeply ashamed” of your Epstein ties? Fuck off, pig. If you had even an ounce of respect for people who don’t happen to be white men like you, there would be nothing to apologize for. You weren’t some ambitious supplicant, begging for scraps of approval from influential people in hopes you could do good for the world. YOU WERE THE FUCKING PRESIDENT OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY. You could have shown integrity, respect, tolerance, and firmness in rejecting repugnant behavior. Do you really think that Harvard, or you as an individual, would have suffered because you didn’t suck up to Epstein?

Me thinks that if you had an ounce of decency, you could have resisted the urge to become one of the many tainted individuals in the Epstein files.

Since you eagerly adopted the Epstein view of women as objects to be abused and regarded with contempt, I feel zero pity for your current disgrace.

Asshole.

Epstein Files => Trump Impeachment & Conviction?
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No apology necessary. You have given the greaseball scumbag exactly the level of respectful commentary he deserves.

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As humblebrags go, that’s pretty darn good.

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Veritas, CC. Well played.

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Humblebrag, my ever-expanding ass. If it bothers you that I have something in my background that some people are foolishly impressed by (they should not be, as I well know from personal experience), that’s on you.

For the record, I don’t ever arbitrarily mention Harvard. I doubt 98% of my friends and acquaintances where I live now know I went there, as it is irrelevant in my daily life and never comes up. If they found out for some reason, and made some idiotic “I’m impressed” remark, I would quickly assure them that it is utterly irrelevant to my value as a person, if for no other reason (and there ARE other reasons) that I graduated over 40 years ago.

Of late I have brought it up occasionally on this message board, because Harvard in general and Larry Summers in particular have been in the news and I have opinions that are informed by my own, largely negative, impressions of the place. I’ve been back for a few things in recent years, and while I’m sure the students are on the whole fine (as are the hardworking staff, and a portion of the professors), the institution is still laughably full of itself after all these years.

DISCLAIMER: All nastiness is performative. In real life, I don’t particularly care and I certainly wouldn’t bother to be confrontational toward Robot Arm. But this is the Pit, so I think I am legally required to be obnoxious. Am I succeeding?

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Nope.

Coming on strong, yes. I could even say thorny. But not obnoxious.

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I thought I was the one being performative.

Next time you’re around, want to grab a burger at Bartley’s?

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Am I shocked that a misogynist was chummy with Epstein? Nope.

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Lol. Stop being nice in the Pit, dammit.

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Never attended Harvard, but I did go Ivy for grad school. When people talk about those awful elitist liberal Ivy League schools I snort. Elitist, yes. Liberal? Not by any reasonable standard. I studied social work, and I remember the moment that I realized the school I was attending was kind of the problem we were all talking about trying to solve. I did enjoy my program and the people in it, but the fucking Dean of Social Work was a Republican legislator. They are maybe not conservative in the MAGA sense but they are conservative in never wanting anything to change, even when that thing is entrenched social inequality. I went to a very progressive undergraduate school so I know the difference between lip service and action.

I wouldn’t say I have overwhelmingly negative feelings about grad school, but I was disappointed at how lifeless it was compared to my public undergrad, how sterile and how unwilling to change. So I co-sign and I am not surprised this asshole still enjoyed prominence after insulting half of the students. Good riddance.

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That was a legit offer. I was at Bartley’s about a month ago. Might be tough to get two seats together, though.

The Tasty was before my time, but I’ll miss Out of Town News. I can show you where the plaque is for Tom Magliozzi.

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He hasn’t had enough consequences yet.

Every time he opens his mouth, people should ask him if the garbage he’s about to spew is something he workshopped with Epstein. Let him atone by full and open testimony of everything and everyone he saw and everything he did, and only then, after a just term in prison (if appropriate), he can get a job sweeping up somewhere.

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I’d take you up on it then, if I were anywhere nearby … I’m a few thousand miles away these days.

Everyone has Harvard Square/Cambridge memories based on when they lived in the area … I go way, way back to when Out of Town News was a mainstay. Favorite eateries included Formaggio’s, Elsie’s, and Paco’s Tacos (all of them long gone).

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Larry Summers actually did some good at Harvard. Probably the most valuable thing he did was to make it possible, even easy, for Harvard students to get credit for studying abroad. Before Summers, Harvard was so full of itself that it doesn’t accept any study anywhere else as truly worthwhile and it was basically impossibly for a student to get credit to classwork abroad. He made some other positive changes.

But he’s an unmitigated asshole. Despite the public stories, he wasn’t fired for his controversial statement about women in academia. He was fired because he had managed to piss off ever other person who held any power anywhere at Harvard, and that statement was an excuse for them to attack him. I knew both faculty and staff at Harvard at the time, and i got an earful about it.

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Want to join me and CairoCarol at Bartley’s?

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At the risk of hijacking my own thread (but it’s the pit so we don’t really care, right?) did you have any interaction with HIID? I don’t want to name any names, as there were both exceptionally good and - well, I wouldn’t say bad, but ill-suited to the responsibilities they were entrusted with - folks there, many of whom I knew well enough personally to feel a little icky about naming.

Let’s just say that HIID’s demise was gave some individuals the comeuppance they richly deserved, while I also mourned the loss of what had been a pretty cool organization.

If anyone has no idea what I’m talking about, but is bored enough to want details, just Google “scandal” with “Harvard Institute for International Development” and you’ll find more than you want to know. Ugh. What a mess.

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Sure! I like Bartleys.

No. I knew people in Math and French and the publishing department and IT and the med school. But I’ve never interacted with anyone from HIID.

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Come to think of it, I might have a very brief moment of Harvard Square presence, mid-May. We’re doing a New England tour then, one purpose of which is to allow my husband to participate in reunion activities (he was in a different class than me, so I am mercifully exempt from all the festivities except one dinner). So it is possible I’ll have some available time, though not guaranteed. Most likely lunchtime, if it happens.