Harvard declines to remove Sackler name from museum and campus building [View all]
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Source: The Guardian
Sat 10 Aug 2024 12.25 EDT
Last modified on Sat 10 Aug 2024 12.26 EDT
Harvard University has decided that it will not remove the name of the Sackler family from two of its buildings, despite years of protests from families of opioid overdose victims and anti-opioid groups.
In its recent denaming proposal update, a Harvard review committee rebuffed a 23-page proposal filed in October 2022 by Harvard College Overdose Prevention and Education Students to dename the Arthur M Sackler Museum, part of the Harvard Art Museums, and the Arthur M Sackler Building, a campus building. The Sackler name is “deeply tied to the opioid epidemic,” according to the initial proposal which the Harvard Crimson reviewed.
It went on to add: “To many of us – students, staff, and faculty – it is unacceptable and deeply offensive that we are represented by the Sackler name … It is embarrassing and unsettling to know that our school, unlike almost every other cultural and educational institution that at one point displayed the Sackler name, has decided to keep the name, despite the message of disrespect that it sends to our community and to the world.”
The Sackler family owned and controlled Purdue Pharma, the former manufacturer of OxyContin. The prescription painkiller has played a central role in the US’s deadly opioid epidemic which has seen more than 500,000 overdose deaths over the last twenty years.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/education/article/2024/aug/10/harvard-sackler-buildings
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