The Sackler family owned Purdue Pharma which has come under scrutiny due to the opioid epidemic.
The Harvard Crimson reports:
Harvard Will Not Remove Sackler Name From Art Museum and Campus BuildingHarvard will not remove the Sackler name from one of three University art museums and another campus building, ending a yearslong campaign by student activists for Harvard to distance itself from the family and its role in the opioid epidemic.A committee tasked with reviewing a request to remove Arthur M. Sackler’s name from the two buildings announced in a report on Wednesday that it did not recommend denaming. The Harvard Corporation, the University’s highest governing body, accepted the committee’s recommendation last month.Sackler’s family, which owned the company that became Purdue Pharma, has been considered by some activists to be synonymous with the opioid epidemic. In 2020, Purdue Pharma pled guilty to charges related to the aggressive marketing of the addictive painkiller OxyContin — a drug credited with fueling the opioid crisis.In October 2022, a group of students submitted a 23-page denaming proposal for the buildings, arguing that Arthur Sackler’s association with Purdue Pharma justified denaming on its own. And, though Arthur Sackler died nine years before OxyContin’s release, the proposal said he advanced marketing practices that contributed to the drug’s rise.But the committee tasked with reviewing the denaming request — which was chaired by Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 during his tenure as provost — said that it did not find the arguments in the proposal to be convincing.“The committee was not persuaded by the proposal’s arguments that denaming is appropriate because Arthur Sackler’s name is tainted by association with other members of the Sackler family or because Arthur Sackler shares responsibility for the opioid crisis due to his having developed aggressive pharmaceutical marketing techniques that others misused after his death,” the report read.
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