Image 01 Image 03

Activists at Harvard Stage Die-in to Protest School’s Connection to Opioid Company

Activists at Harvard Stage Die-in to Protest School’s Connection to Opioid Company

“The protesters called on the Ivy League school to remove the drug company owner’s name from all university buildings”

At its core, this seems to be all about changing names on campus buildings.

The College Fix reports:

Activists stage ‘die-in’ at Harvard to protest opioid drug company connection

Harvard University students continue their fight against the university’s association with the Sackler family, owners of the OxyContin producers Purdue Pharma, in partnership with an outside advocacy group.

An online petition titled “Tell Harvard: Cut Ties With Makers of OxyContin” has 14,856 signatures as of May 10, just shy of the petition’s goal of 15,000.

More than 50 students posed as corpses on the floor of the Harvard Art Museums or tossed empty pill containers and bloodied paper money from the second-floor balcony in an April protest. Some of the protesters at the Harvard Art Museum chanted slogans such as “No More Drug War,” “Take Down the Name,” and “Shame on Sackler.”

The protesters called on the Ivy League school to remove the drug company owner’s name from all university buildings, including the Arthur M. Sackler Building and Arthur M. Sackler Museum, according to The Crimson. Protesters also demanded the university increase the supply of naloxone on campus, a medication that can quickly reverse an opioid overdose.

In a statement shortly following the April protest at Harvard, university spokesman Jason Newton stated that the university is “reviewing a proposal to dename the two buildings,” according to The Crimson.

The event was co-sponsored by Harvard Student Labor Action Movement and the outside advocacy group P.A.I.N., The Harvard Crimson reported. P.A.I.N. stands for Prescription Addiction Intervention Now.

Harvard’s Student Labor Action Movement “is committed to activism and education in support of social and economic justice and organizes in support of workers’ rights and a more equitable Harvard community,” according to its website.

The efforts denouncing the Sackler connection the to Ivy League university dates back at least five years.

Harvard College Overdose Prevention and Education Students, a campus group promoting drug overdose awareness, submitted a 23-page request last fall asking for the Sackler name to be removed from campus, The Crimson reported.

DONATE

Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.

Comments

If the University quote the names” buildings, do they need to return Sackler‘s huge donations?

henrybowman | May 12, 2023 at 1:31 pm

It’s Harvard. They can name all the buildings after Truman Capote and Angela Davis, and it really wouldn’t change anything.

They go to school to learn performance art.

Now do fentanyl.