It seems like everyone is distancing themselves from former Harvard president Larry Summers – even Rhode Island gubernatorial candidate Helena Foulkes.

In a Rhode Island Monthly profile published earlier this year, Foulkes, who earned a bachelor’s degree and master’s degree from Harvard, described herself as “still close to this day” with Summers, who was a professor when she was a student.

Now Summers, a polarizing but influential economist who was US treasury secretary during the Clinton administration and then became president of Harvard, is facing a public reckoning as his ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein came into focus last week.

Emails released by a congressional committee last week showed that Summers remained in contact with Epstein prior to Epstein’s arrest in 2019. Harvard has launched a new review of its connections to Epstein after a Globe report on a donation Epstein brokered for Summers’ wife from a high-profile Wall Street financier.

Epstein died by suicide while in jail in 2019. Summers announced this week he’d step away from several public commitments, including his teaching role at Harvard and from his position on the board of directors at OpenAI.

Summers has maxed-out campaign donations to Foulkes in recent years, contributing $2,000 in both 2024 and 2025, and $1,000 in 2021 and 2022 (the state raised the donation limit from $1,000 to $2,000 beginning in 2024). 

In a statement, Foulkes’ spokesman Jon Romano said: “Jeffrey Epstein was a vile human being. Larry Summers was Helena’s thesis advisor over 30 years ago, and Helena thinks his correspondence with Epstein is both deeply disturbing and wrong. Helena commends Congress for working to bring these files to light.”