Oxford University cuts ties with Sackler family over links with opioids

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University follows other institutions in removing titles of family who make OxyContin painkiller

Oxford’s vice-chancellor, Prof Irene Tracey, launched a review earlier this year into its relationship with the Sackler family. Photograph: Jill Mead/The Guardian

The University of Oxford will cut its ties with the Sackler family, whose wealth came from addictive opioid drugs, removing the family’s name from buildings, galleries and positions funded through their donations.

The university’s governing council approved the measure to strip the Sackler name from two galleries in the Ashmolean Museum and a university library as well as several staff positions, following an investigation earlier this year by Oxford’s new vice-chancellor, Prof Irene Tracey.

The move follows sustained criticism of Oxford’s retention of the names, as major institutions such as the British Museum and the V&A removed Sackler titles after recognition that the funding was connected with the family’s ownership of the now bankrupt Purdue Pharma, manufacturers of the addictive OxyContin painkiller.

The university said: “Oxford University has undertaken a review of its relationship with the Sackler family and their trusts, including the way their benefactions to the university are recognised.

“Following this review, the university has decided that the university buildings, spaces and staff positions using the Sackler name will no longer do so. These review outcomes have had the full support of the Sackler

As part of the decision, the Sackler library has been renamed the Bodleian Art, Archaeology and Ancient World Library. Three staff posts supported by the family’s donations will also drop the Sackler title, including the Ashmolean’s keeper of antiquities.

The university also said that “all donations received from the Sackler family and their trusts will be retained by the university for their intended educational purposes. No new donations have been received from either the family or their trusts since January 2019.”

However, the university will retain recognition of the Sackler gifts on a plaque at the university’s Clarendon building and on the Ashmolean museum’s donor board “for the purposes of historical recording of donations to the university”.

Tracey, a professor of neuroscience who specialises in pain perception and anaesthetics, launched the review before the Financial Times revealed in February that the university maintained its links with the Sackler family, extending invitations to events such as the Oxford-Cambridge boat race, and continuing to accept donations even as Purdue became embroiled in legal action over its role in the US’s deadly epidemic of opioid addiction.

In 2019 the Louvre in Paris removed the Sackler title from the museum’s oriental antiquities wing, while the Serpentine Gallery said it would no longer accept donations from Sackler trusts. Other institutions followed, including New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2021.

Last year George Osborne, the chair of the British Museum, announced it would remove the Sackler name from all galleries, rooms and endowments supported by the family’s trusts, saying it was time to move “into a new era”.

(source: theguardian.com)

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