BOSTON — Harvard University has decided against removing from campus buildings the name of a family whose company makes the powerful painkiller , despite protests from parents whose children fatally overdosed. The decision last month by the to retain name on a museum building and second building runs counter to the trend among several institutions around the world that have removed the Sackler name in recent years. Among the first to do it was Tufts University, which in 2019 announced that it would removed the Sackler name from all programs and facilities on its Boston health sciences campus.
Louvre Museum in Paris and Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York have also removed the Sackler name. The move by , which was confirmed Thursday, was greeted with anger from those who had pushed for the name change as well as groups like the anti-opioid group Prescription Addiction Intervention Now or P.A.
I.N. It was started by photographer Nan Goldin, who was addicted to from 2014 to 2017, and the group has held scores of museum protests over the Sackler name.
“Harvard’s continued embrace of the Sackler name is an insult to overdose victims and their families,” P.A.I.
N. said in a statement Friday. “It’s time that 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.
” Mika Simoncelli, a graduate who organized a student protest over the name in 2023 with members of P.