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In 2019, Jeffrey E. Epstein was charged with the sex trafficking of minors. That charge triggered a wave of recriminations across the nation, including at some of America’s most elite universities. In the decade since his first arrest in 2006 for soliciting prostitution with a child, Epstein had nurtured close connections with some of the most prominent academics in the country.

Those recriminations also reached Harvard. While Harvard President Drew G. Faust had forbidden the University from directly accepting his money after a 2008 child-sex conviction, between 2010 and 2015, Epstein facilitated over $9 million in donations from associates like Leon Black to support work at Harvard — with the knowledge and encouragement of Harvard development staff.

After the 2019 charges, then-Harvard President Lawrence S. Bacow expressed profound regret on behalf of the University and convened a committee “to review how we prevent these situations in the future.” Eight months later, that report found Harvard had indeed followed President Faust’s directive, but only technically: Yes, the University had received no Epstein money directly, but through a pattern of cooperation and engagement and with the aid of some of Harvard’s most prominent academics, Epstein had been encouraged to facilitate the funding of Harvard’s academic work indirectly.

Almost a year after that first report, the University concluded its investigation, and took formal action against just one member of the Harvard faculty: Martin A. Nowak. Nowak was “disciplined” for his ongoing professional relationship with Epstein. His Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, funded with the help of Epstein, was shuttered, and he was banned from serving as a principal investigator on any academic research for two years.

Thus did Harvard allow the public to believe that just one faculty member had been responsible for the millions Epstein had secured to Harvard  —  or at least, just one faculty member would be punished for the relationships that had inspired that money.

At the time, some of us were astonished that the University had so completely airbrushed this history, scapegoating a single faculty member while leaving many more unnamed and undisciplined. In April 2021, I published a piece in this paper, arguing that Harvard had “still not given us a fair accounting,” hiding “that account behind a scapegoat.” Epstein had been repeatedly fêted in Cambridge, with many faculty members and some from the administration joining him at dinners and academic events. How had that part of the story been so completely missed?

Most striking among the report’s omissions was former Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers. Despite his close connections to Epstein from the early years of Epstein’s relationship to Harvard  —  Summers had established PED after Epstein proposed it but before Faust’s ban — Summers was named just once in the 2020 report acknowledging that connection.

From 2003 through 2019, Summers had been a central figure in Epstein’s relationship to Harvard. He had attended events hosted by Epstein and planned private meetings. Besides Epstein’s lawyer, and now-professor emeritus, Alan M. Dershowitz, he was by far the most prominent of the Harvard elite at the center of Harvard’s Epstein relationship.

Yet Summers is essentially invisible in the official accounts. A gift to support the work of Summers’s wife was mentioned in a footnote to the 2020 report, though obscurely, since she does not share Summers’s name. And never subsequently has Harvard disclosed anything more about his ongoing relationship with Epstein, which continued, as we’ve now learned through the published Epstein emails, until Epstein’s 2019 arrest.

Harvard has now declared that it will reopen its investigation, apparently to more fully account for Summers’s relationship to Epstein. Yet the critical question now is the scope of that review. Yes, of course, Harvard must finally be transparent about the depth of the relationship between its former president and distinguished University Professor, and the world’s most infamous child-sex offender. But the more important question that Harvard must now address is why Summers was airbrushed from this story originally.

Summers has acknowledged that he was interviewed for the 2020 report. No doubt, his cooperation continued after that report was released. And yet not once did Harvard take any steps to acknowledge what it must have known — that Summers was central to this story.

Why was this never acknowledged? Who made that decision, and how was it justified? Was there anyone in the administration who thought it would be appropriate to at least acknowledge Summers’s role, especially as the University was explicitly threatening the tenure of Nowak? Did anyone honestly conclude that Nowak had worse judgment than Summers?

We can’t know the answers to these questions, because Harvard seemed to hide those facts five years ago. But if we’re to learn anything from this history, we need to know them now. Scapegoating is a familiar pattern within unaccountable institutions, for it is a simple way to distract the public when a story becomes embarrassing. If we’re to nurture accountable institutions, institutions of integrity, we must target not just those who do wrong, but those who may be conspiring to cover up the wrongs of the most privileged among us.

There’s little need to reform Larry Summers. He will, I suspect, pass quickly from Harvard’s orbit. But it is the culture that would have allowed Larry Summers to be protected that must now be called to account. How could Harvard have allowed this production of Hamlet without the Prince? And will it now commit to a practice that will not protect the elite among us, while shaming those not quite elite enough?

Lawrence Lessig is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law and Leadership at Harvard Law School.