Headlines for February 26, 2026

On Wednesday, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers said he will resign as a professor at Harvard University at the end of the semester over his ties to Epstein. Summers had previously served as president of Harvard. He had been on leave since last November after the Harvard Crimson student newspaper detailed how Summers had asked Epstein for relationship advice — how to have an affair with a person he was mentoring.

Meanwhile, Bob Kerrey, the former Democratic senator from Nebraska, resigned from his role as chairman of the company Monolith over his ties to Epstein.

Nobel laureate Richard Axel also announced his resignation as co-director of Columbia University’s neuroscience institute over his association with Epstein.

The president and CEO of the World Economic Forum, Børge Brende, said he was resigning after the forum launched an independent investigation into his relationship with Epstein.

Meanwhile, Bill Gates has apologized to staff of the Gates Foundation over his ties to Epstein. Gates also acknowledged that he had two affairs with Russian women that Epstein later discovered. According to a recording obtained by the Wall Street Journal, Gates admitted that he first met with Epstein in 2011, years after Epstein had pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting a minor for prostitution.