Do you believe in Barrack Obama try to ruin American?
Former Harvard President Larry Summers announced Wednesday that he will retire from his academic and faculty appointments at Harvard University at the end of the academic year following the release of documents detailing his communications with Jeffrey Epstein.
A Harvard spokesperson confirmed that Harvard Kennedy School Dean Jeremy Weinstein accepted Summers’ resignation from his leadership role as co-director of the Mossavar Rahmani Center for Business and Government, Fox News reported.
“In connection with the ongoing review by the University of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein that were recently released by the government, Harvard Kennedy School Dean Jeremy Weinstein has accepted Professor Lawrence H. Summers’ resignation from his leadership position as co-director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government,” the spokesperson said in a statement to Fox News Digital.
“Professor Summers has announced that he will retire from his academic and faculty appointments at Harvard at the end of this academic year and will remain on leave until that time,” the spokesperson added.
Summers said in a statement through a spokesperson that the decision was difficult.
“I have made the difficult decision to retire from my Harvard professorship at the end of this academic year,” Summers said.
“I will always be grateful to the thousands of students and colleagues I have been privileged to teach and work with since coming to Harvard as a graduate student 50 years ago,” he added.
“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,” Summers said.
Summers, who served as U.S. Treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton and as an economic adviser to President Barack Obama, had previously announced in November that he was stepping away from teaching amid scrutiny over his past communications with Epstein.
Details of those communications became public after a House committee released a trove of emails.
Borge Brende, the president and CEO of the World Economic Forum (WEF), stepped down on Thursday after an investigation into his ties to the late serial sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
“After careful consideration, I have decided to step down as President and CEO of the World Economic Forum. My time here, spanning 8-1/2 years, has been profoundly rewarding. I am grateful for the incredible collaboration with my colleagues, partners, and constituents, and I believe now is the right moment for the Forum to continue its important work without distractions,” Brende announced in a statement.
Brende’s statement didn’t mention Epstein, but he quit just a few weeks after the WEF started looking into his ties to the late sex offender.
The investigation started after it was found that Brende had eaten with Epstein at least three times and had also texted and emailed him, even though Epstein had been found guilty of trying to get a child to work as a prostitute years earlier.
“I was completely unaware of Epstein’s past and criminal activities,” said Brende after news of his relationship with Epstein was made public. “Had I known about his background, I would have declined the initial invitation to join [former Norwegian Deputy Prime Minister Terje] Rod-Larsen and any subsequent dinner invitations or other communications.”
Brende had been the WEF’s CEO and president since October 2017, when he stepped down on Thursday. Brende became president of the WEF just a few days after he left the Norwegian government as foreign minister.
Obama Accuses JD Vance Of Promoting ‘Blood And Soil’ Politics
Former President Barack Obama rarely mentions Vice President JD Vance by name, but that changed this week with one of his sharpest public attacks since Vance took office.
The comments immediately fueled speculation that Democrats are beginning to focus more attention on the vice president as Republicans look ahead to the post-Trump era.
Speaking Thursday during a conversation with author Malcolm Gladwell, Obama accused Vance of promoting what he described as a “blood and soil” vision of America, despite being married to Usha Vance, the daughter of Indian immigrants.
Obama made the remarks while discussing the Reconstruction era and arguing that many of the same debates over citizenship, voting rights and national identity continue today.
“We have a politics now that at least one of our major parties has been captured by politics that is not that subtle about suggesting that ‘We the people’ means a certain kind of people,” Obama said.
“When you have the vice president, current vice president, making a speech that is basically a blood and soil version of ‘We the people,’ that it matters who your parents were and how long they’ve been here despite him being married to a daughter of an immigrant himself.”
The phrase “blood and soil” is historically associated with Nazi Germany and white nationalist ideology.
Obama went on to argue that debates over who belongs in America remain central to the nation’s politics.
“That echoes, then, ideas about who can be a citizen, who belongs, who gets to make decisions,” he said.
Gladwell followed by accusing Vance of hypocrisy, arguing that the vice president was making what he called a nativist argument despite his own family’s immigrant background.
Obama agreed.
“That is progress,” Obama said.
“Listen, hypocrisy is progress. It is, because it means that you feel guilty enough to either lie to yourself or others.”
Fox News Digital reported that it reached out to Vance’s office for comment.
Obama did not identify the specific speech he was criticizing, but Vance’s most recent nationally televised remarks came during Independence Day celebrations marking America’s 250th birthday.
In that speech, Vance encouraged Americans to reject what he called a “two-dimensional view” of the country focused only on its historical failures.
“So what I’d ask you to do, my fellow Americans, on our 250th birthday, is to reject the two-dimensional view of your fellow citizens and reject the two-dimensional view of your country,” Vance said.
“Reject the view of your nation that sees only its sins, but not its grace and its greatness.”
He also emphasized that America’s accomplishments were achieved by “a common people working towards a common future.”
Obama has generally avoided making Vance a regular target since the vice president took office.
One notable exception came during the 2024 presidential campaign when then-Vice President Kamala Harris selected Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate.
Without naming Vance directly, Obama contrasted Harris’ choice with the Republican ticket.
“When a presidential candidate chooses a running mate, it says a lot about who they are and what kind of president they’ll be,” Obama said at the time, Fox News reported.
Political observers have increasingly discussed Vance as a potential frontrunner for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination, though he has not announced any plans to run.
Against that backdrop, Obama’s unusually direct criticism is likely to fuel speculation that some Democrats are beginning to sharpen their message against a politician they view as a likely future standard-bearer for the Republican Party. While no Democratic leaders have publicly described their strategy in those terms, prominent figures often begin drawing contrasts with potential future rivals well before a presidential campaign officially begins.
Whether that proves to be the case remains to be seen, but Obama’s remarks marked one of his most pointed critiques of Vance to date and ensured the vice president once again found himself at the center of the national political conversation.
