Harvard declines to remove Sackler name from museum and campus building

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.

Explaining its decision to keep the Sackler name, the Harvard review committee wrote : “Informed by research and review of relevant literature, the committee found that while Arthur M Sackler’s legacy is complex and debatable, the petition did not meet the standard for denaming under Harvard’s procedures for handling denaming requests.”

Though he died nine years before the drug was introduced, Arthur Sackler’s name has become heavily synonymous with Purdue Pharma and the deadly opioid crisis.

Still, the committee said it 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 Harvard Corporation, the university’s highest governing body, accepted the committee’s recommendation, the Harvard Crimson reported this week.

In response to the university’s decision, the anti-opioid group Prescription Addiction Intervention Now (Pain) said, according to the Associated Press: “Harvard’s continued embrace of the Sackler name is an insult to overdose victims and their families.”

It added: “It’s time that Harvard stand by their students and live up to their mandate of being a repository of higher learning of history and an institution that embodies the best of human values.”

Meanwhile, Mika Simoncelli, a Harvard graduate who organized a student protest over the name last year, told AP: “Even after a receiving a strong, thorough proposal for denaming, and facing multiple protests from students and community members about Sackler name, Harvard lacks the moral clarity to make a change that should have been made years ago.”

Harvard’s decision stands in contrast to that of several institutions around the world including Tufts University in Massachusetts, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Guggenheim in New York, the Louvre in Paris Museum and Tate Modern and Tate Britain in London all of which have removed either Sackler-named programs or signage.

Harvard did not immediately respond to the Guardian’s request for comment.