University of Oxford drops Sackler name from buildings

The University of Oxford is to remove the Sackler name from its buildings and staff posts after a review into its ties with the US family implicated in America’s opioid crisis.

The university’s governing council voted on 15 May to drop the Sackler name from two galleries at the Ashmolean Museum, where two staff posts – including the Sackler Keeper of Antiquities – will lose the family’s name. The Sackler Library will now become the Bodleian Art, Archaeology and Ancient World Library.

It follows criticism of continued links with the US family that owns Purdue Pharmaceuticals, the manufacturer of the highly addictive painkiller OxyContin. In 2020, the company pleaded guilty to criminal charges over its marketing and eventually agreed to pay out more than $6 billion (£4.8 billion) over its role in the US opioid epidemic, which has led the deaths of an estimated 500,000 people over the past two decades.

While other major UK institutions, including the Tate and the National Portrait Gallery, cut financial ties with the family, Oxford did not. In 2018, it confirmed there was “no intention” to reconsider donations from the Sackler family and its trusts, which have donated more than £10 million to the university since the 1990s.

Announcing its U-turn following a review, the university said it had “decided that the University buildings, spaces and staff positions using the Sackler name will no longer do so”. In addition to renaming buildings, the Sackler-Clarendon Associate Professorship of Sedimentary Geology would be renamed.

However, the Sacklers’ gifts would be retained for their “intended educational purposes” and “for historical recording purposes, the Sackler name will be retained on the Clarendon Arch and Ashmolean Museum’s donor board.” No new donations had been received since January 2019.

The review’s outcomes had the “full support of the Sackler family,” a university spokesman added.

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com