Tufts University Cuts Ties With Purdue Pharma Founders

MEDFORD, MA — Tufts University is removing the Sackler family name from its school of graduate biomedical sciences, medical education building and medical school programs. University officials announced the decision Thursday, saying it came after "long and thoughtful deliberations" and feedback from the Tufts community.

"Our students, faculty, staff, alumni, and others have shared with us the negative impact the Sackler name has on them each day, noting the human toll of the opioid epidemic in which members of the Sackler family and their company, Purdue Pharma, are associated," Chairman of the Board of Trustees Peter Dolan and President Anthony Monaco said in a joint statement. "We are grateful to those who have shared their thoughts with us. It is clear that the Sackler name, with its link to the current health crisis, runs counter to the school's mission."

The school will remove the Sackler name from the Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences; the Arthur M. Sackler Center for Medical Education; the Sackler Laboratory for the Convergence of Biomedical, Physical and Engineering Sciences; the Sackler Families Fund for Collaborative Cancer Biology Research; and the Richard S. Sackler, M.D. Endowed Research Fund. They will be replaced with "Tufts" in the name.

The Sacklers do not appear on the university's other campuses, according to Dolan and Monaco.

Tufts will also establish a $3 million endowment to support education, research and civic engagement programs aimed at the prevention and treatment of addiction and substance abuse. Officials said they are not seeking to erase the Sacklers from Tufts' history, but rather recognize and contextualize the family's involvement over the years.

The university's relationship with the Sacklers began in the 1980s and included contributions from Arthur Sackler, who died in 1987, about a decade before Purdue Pharma introduced OxyContin. Tufts will create an exhibit inside the medical school to detail the Sacklers' involvement with Tufts and to educate the community about the opioid epidemic.

Dolan and Monaco also shared a report conducted by outside investigators earlier this year that assessed Tufts' relationships with Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family. The report found "no wrongdoing by the university or its personnel, no violations of university policy, and no evidence of an arrangement by which Purdue or the Sacklers agreed to fund programs or research in exchange for certain outcomes or curriculum," Dolan and Monaco said.

The report did, however, recommend that Tufts adopt a stronger screening procedures for donors, enhance its gift policies, develop more stringent conflict-of-interest policies, strengthen compliance practices and leadership, and both develop and make publicly available guiding principles for gift acceptance.

Daniel Connolly, an attorney for members of the Sackler family, said they will seek to have the Tufts decision reversed. In an email to Patch, Connolly wrote, "there is something particularly disturbing and intellectually dishonest when juxtaposing the results of the Stern investigation with the decision to remove the name of a donor who made gifts in good faith starting almost 40 years ago."

"We appreciate that after a careful inquiry Tufts determined what has been true all along, that Purdue and the Sackler family conducted themselves properly and no wrongdoing or threat to academic integrity was found," Connolly wrote. "This investigation's findings are emblematic of so many of the negative stories surrounding Purdue and the family, that a careful look at the facts proves the allegations to be false and sensational. Tufts acknowledges their extraordinary decision about removal of the family name from campus is not based on the findings of their report, but rather is based on unproven allegations about the Sackler family and Purdue."

Tufts will hold two town halls in the coming days to discuss its history with the Sacklers, its naming decisions and the report in greater detail. The meetings will take place Friday, December 6, at 1 p.m. in Behrakis Auditorium in the Jaharis Center on the Boston health sciences campus and on Monday, Dec. 9, at noon in Breed Hall at 51 Winthrop Street on the Medford/Somerville campus.