The resignation of Harvard economics professor and former university president Larry Summers was only the latest repercussion from the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files — the millions of documents gathered by federal prosecutors that Congress ordered the Department of Justice to release to the public.

There are no doubt more heads are about to roll: The disgraced financier burrowed his way deep into the worlds of academia, business, and government. The files show that even after he was convicted in 2008 in Florida of soliciting a minor and served a short prison sentence, he maintained an impressive web of connections almost up to the day he was arrested again, this time for sex trafficking, in 2019.

There is a critical difference, though, between holding the people in that network accountable for conduct revealed in the files and guilt by association. Some of the people mentioned who traded emails with Epstein did nothing wrong — and almost none of them have been accused of crimes in this country (several foreign nationals have been charged or arrested under their countries’ laws).

That does not mean that professional consequences may not be appropriate in some cases. It is difficult to see how Summers, for example, could have continued as a Harvard professor after the emails revealed him bantering with Epstein about women and making business connections. His resignation was the right move.

But what about Casey Wasserman, the executive in charge of the 2028 Olympics, who also faces calls to step aside? The case against him is thin. Wasserman flew once on Epstein’s private jet on a trip alongside former president Bill Clinton in 2002, and exchanged suggestive messages with Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s longtime companion, in 2003, when he was 29.

That was years before either Epstein or Maxwell would be accused or convicted of any crimes, and there is no evidence Wasserman knew about any such illegal activities at the time. Unless more evidence proves a closer connection to Epstein or Maxwell’s crimes, the effort to remove Wasserman from the Olympics seems like a textbook case of guilt by association.

It’s perhaps a closer call for those like Harvard physicist Lisa Randall or former MIT professor Noam Chomsky, among the many academic figures who associated with Epstein after the 2008 conviction. They knowingly chose to mix with a convicted sex offender. Still, it’s not illegal to give people second chances after they’ve done their time.

Where the disclosures from the DOJ files are more concerning is where they raise doubts about individuals’ own conduct. For instance, in Britain police arrested former UK ambassador to the United States Peter Mandelson amid allegations that he may have shared confidential British government information with Epstein.

For some other individuals, the emails suggest they at least crossed paths with the women Epstein was trafficking. As the Globe’s Spotlight team reported on Wednesday, Harvard math professor Martin Nowak was introduced to two women the financier was exploiting, but he denied knowing that at the time. “I had no knowledge of his crimes,” Nowak told the Globe. “I was urged to cultivate Mr. Epstein to continue his financial support of academic endeavors.” (Nowak said he never had a “relationship” with anyone Epstein introduced him to.)

Institutions should investigate those situations on a case-by-case basis, as Harvard is doing with Nowak.

None of Epstein’s privileged and powerful cronies make very sympathetic figures. And since Epstein’s victims never got justice in a courtroom — he died by suicide in jail in 2019 — it can be tempting to view the downfall or shaming of his associates as the next best thing.

But that’s not the way justice is supposed to work. Indeed, the reason that the Justice Department typically doesn’t release files from criminal investigations — the reason Congress had to compel it to do so in this case — is precisely to avoid tarring people with innuendos they’ll never have a chance to rebut in court.

Given the extraordinary interest in Epstein — and the conspiracy theories about his case — it was important for the government to release the files. But they contain a lot of shades of gray that are at risk of disappearing in the media frenzy. The revelations in the files call for accountability — but not a moral panic.

— Boston Globe