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.
