Marbella Marlo ’24: Manny! I was just admiring some artwork in one of Harvard’s art museums, the Sackler museum, and felt the need to text you. Just last week, the Harvard College Overdose Prevention and Education released a 23-page proposal urging Harvard to rename the museum. What are your thoughts?
Manuel Yepes ’24: I was just thinking about that! Whenever I go, it seems weird to see the name of the family that essentially triggered the opioid crisis adorning the entrance. What’s the story behind that?
Marbella: The Arthur M. Sackler Museum bears the name of one of the founders of Purdue-Frederick, a pharmaceutical company that was rebranded into Purdue Pharma after his death in 1987. A decade later, Purdue Pharma introduced OxyContin into the prescription drug market, which caused many of the 400,000 opioid overdoses in the past twenty years. Last year, the Sackler family agreed to pay $6 billion in settlements and file for bankruptcy to compensate for fraudulent misuse of marketing techniques to physicians that fueled the opioid epidemic.
Harvard has faced mounting pressure in recent years to rename the Sackler Building. President Bacow has repeatedly refused, claiming that “it would be inappropriate for the university to either return the gift or take Sackler’s name off the building,” as previously reported by the Crimson. Yet in 2020, Bacow launched the Committee to Articulate Principles on Renaming, which has spearheaded the movement to rename Harvard buildings and spaces “associated with historical figures whose advocacy or support of activities would today be found abhorrent by members of the Harvard community.”
Manuel: All that backlash is well-founded. I think students would rather not be reminded of the opioid crisis everytime they just want to admire Harvard’s art collections.
Marbella: I actually think that this backlash is unjustified. Arthur M. Sackler did not release or lobby for OxyContin. The building was donated and constructed in 1985, and Sackler died two years later in 1987. Almost a decade later was when OxyContin was officially released by Purdue Pharma in 1996 .
Manuel: True, but he did pursue aggressive, controversial, and frankly irresponsible advertising tactics for other painkillers, the same ones that his sons later used for Oxycontin. Just because he lacked the right drugs at the time, he had the same intentions, but just failed where his sons later succeeded.
Marbella: Well, it can be argued that the advertising tactics that Sackler pioneered were not as insidious as people claimed them to be. In 2018, political scientist Evan Gerstmann actually told Forbes Magazine that “it is an absurd inversion of logic to say that because Arthur Sackler pioneered direct marketing to physicians; he is responsible for the fraudulent misuse of that technique, which occurred many years after his death and from which he procured no financial gain,” but let’s just agree that he is somewhat responsible for the epidemic. The more interesting question, therefore, is whether or not Harvard should rename the building. Sackler is dead, so I do not really see any practical use in renaming it at this time.
Manuel: Ok, I concede, there are probably no practical consequences for changing the name of the museum right now, barring the butterfly effect. There is still something morally wrong in honoring the legacy of a figure who, as Barry Meier wrote in his book on the subject, “helped pioneer some of the most controversial and troubling practices in medicine” that later led to over 50,000 deaths a year, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Even though taking down Confederate monuments may not have any practical effects, it shows that we refuse to memorialize people who have hurt society.
Marbella: Right, but I believe that confederate monuments and building names are incomparable. Harvard buildings perpetuate the legacies of individuals like Sackler and Abbott Lawrence Lowell through the name of a building that they either donated or contributed to the development towards. A building only provides our school with physical resources, learning space, and, in some cases, a place to live. Confederate soldiers didn’t donate their money, nor are the statues contributing anything functional or positive to society. Confederate soldiers’ legacies are also much more symbolic and intangible. Monuments of Robert E. Lee, J.E.B Stuart, and Raphael Semmes commemorate their actions in history, which are the exact sources of their controversy and public criticism. We are not commemorating Sackler for his actions. Only his donations.
Manuel: You are arguing that you can disassociate the good a person does through a donation from their immoral actions in other parts of their life. I do not think that separation is possible. People are not just collections of disconnected actions. They are individuals who must be considered holistically. If Putin donated a building to Harvard, do you really think we should be taking classes in the new Vladimir Putin Center for Philosophy?
Marbella: Well, no. Not only is Putin directly responsible for an entire war, but if he were to hypothetically donate a building now, I do not support, nor do I think Harvard would currently accept donations from such a sadistic individual. It is a different story when the wrongdoings of a donor become known or critiqued after the donation. Harvard is currently under fire for many similar examples: Lowell, Mather, and other significant campus landmarks are named after people who committed sins, and I am not sure if they all should be renamed. It would not only dismiss Harvard’s formative history, but also would fail to recognize these individuals for the positive impacts they also contributed.
Manuel: Renaming the Sackler museum, along with Mather and Lowell, does not dismiss history. Naming a building after someone is an act of active memorialization, emphasizing one individual in the minds of all those who read the signage above the entrance. Choosing to retain this name signals that Harvard believes Sackler deserves such an honorific place within society and in the minds of those who visit the Art Museum.
Marbella: But the Sackler building is rightfully Sackler’s—he paid for it. Are we going to start renaming every building the minute their donors do something controversial?
Manuel: True, we do have to respect transactions, contracts, and the rule of law that they are founded on. However, morality is the cornerstone of law, and sometimes the immorality of one party presents a situation where we have to go to the source and bypass the legality of a contract.
Marbella: Manny, this conversation is too complex to be had over text. Let’s just finish it in person.
Manuel: Sounds good. Dhall in 20?
Marbella: Down.
Manuel: Taking the shuttle now.
Manuel Yepes ’24 (mannyyepes@college.harvard.edu) and Marbella Marlo ’24 (mmarlo@college.harvard.edu) debated the rest of this conversation over Quincy dinner.