What did Larry Summers and Noam Chomsky See in Jeffrey Epstein?

A large swath of America's intellectual and scientific elite appears to be facing the prospect of great embarrassment.

Earlier today I suggested that many of the world’s high and mighty may dread the release of the Epstein files not because they themselves have committed sexual crimes, but out of fear that the disclosures will be extremely embarrassing.

This evening I returned from dinner with my father to see the news that former Treasury Secretary and Harvard President, Larry Summers, has been deeply embarrassed by the publication of his e-mail correspondence with Jeffrey Epstein. Especially embarrassing is the correspondence in which the two men discuss Summers’s desire to seduce a former Harvard student whose father was a former Communist Chinese Party official and founding president of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.

In response to the disclosure of these emails, Summers just issued the following statement.

I am deeply ashamed of my actions and recognize the pain they have caused. I will be stepping back from public commitments as one part of my broader effort to rebuild trust and repair relationships with the people closest to me.

What did Professor Summers see in Epstein? What was so compelling and seductive about Epstein—and so inspiring of confidence—that Summers felt comfortable sharing such intimate and potentially compromising details with him in writing?

Glenn Greenwald just released an interesting monologue in which he expresses his bafflement about what Noam Chomsky saw in Epstein.

There must have been something extraordinarily seductive about Jeffrey Epstein, but what exactly was it?

Off the top of my head, it occurs to me he had some of the magnetic charm of Lord Byron (“mad, bad, and dangerous to know,” as Lady Caroline Lamb described him) and the Italian author, seducer, and proto-fascist leader, Gabriele d’Annunzio.

Increasingly I wonder if the criminal (underage girls) element of this story—though highly significant—has distracted attention from a much broader story of the seduction and embarrassment of America’s intellectual and scientific elite.

Eric Weinstein mused about this in his 2020 episode of his The Portal podcast titled “The Construct.”

If Weinstein’s intuition is correct, it seems possible that Larry Summers and Noam Chomsky are just two of many members of the intellectual elite who are now facing the prospect of being greatly embarrassed.