Elizabeth Warren Wants To Scrub Sackler Name From Harvard Campus
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) speaks to a crowd during a campaign stop at Fat Hill Brewing on May 4, 2019. Image by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images
By PJ Grisar May 9, 2019
Massachusetts Senator and 2020 presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren has officially voiced support for removing the Sackler name from buildings at Harvard University.
Warren, a former law professor at Harvard, told CNN of her position through an aide on Wednesday. The Sackler family are both the majority owners of Purdue Pharma, which manufactures the opioid OxyContin, and prominent patrons of the arts. At Harvard, the Sacklers names are on several buildings, including the Arthur M. Sackler Museum.
The Sacklers are currently embroiled in a number of state lawsuits over allegations that they used unethical marketing to promote OxyContin, and facing public criticism for profiting off the opioid epidemic. Due to this scrutiny, art institutions including London’s Tate museums and the National Portrait Gallery and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York have turned away gifts from the family.
Warren’s support for scrubbing the Sacklers from Harvard comes after she published a post on Medium, also on Wednesday, in which she unveiled a plan to fight opioid addiction with a proposed budget of $100 billion over 10 years. In the post, she criticized the pharmaceutical dynasty.
“The Sacklers made their money pushing OxyContin. Pushing it even as study after study demonstrated its addictive potential,” Warren wrote. “They tried to increase their profits by opening a network of for-profit recovery centers to treat the very same health crisis they were fueling.”
In 2018, when Warren defended her Senate seat, her campaign received $4,500 in donations from members of the Sackler family, CNN reported. Warren’s aide told CNN that that money had already been donated to charities but did not specify which charities, or which members of the family the donations came from.
PJ Grisar is the Forward’s culture intern. He can be reached at [email protected]
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Dive In
-
Culture Did this Jewish literary titan have the right idea about Harry Potter and J.K. Rowling after all?
-
Culture This Jewish New Yorker survived the Holocaust and the Hungarian Revolution, and is still helping others today
-
Culture Will the next pope be good for the Jews?
-
BINTEL BRIEF How do you deal with invitations from someone who drives you nuts?
Most Popular
- 1
Opinion The dangerous Nazi legend behind Trump’s ruthless grab for power
- 2
News Who is Alan Garber, the Jewish Harvard president who stood up to Trump over antisemitism?
- 3
News Student protesters being deported are not ‘martyrs and heroes,’ says former antisemitism envoy
- 4
Opinion What Jewish university presidents say: Trump is exploiting campus antisemitism, not fighting it
In Case You Missed It
-
Culture Did this Jewish literary titan have the right idea about Harry Potter and J.K. Rowling after all?
-
Opinion The profound Yom HaShoah lesson we desperately need to remember under Trump
-
Opinion How Trump’s attacks on the university target what has made America great for Jews
-
Culture This Jewish New Yorker survived the Holocaust and the Hungarian Revolution, and is still helping others today
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.