In Shock “Die-In,” Protesters Demand Harvard Take Down Sackler Identify
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — A gaggle of about 100 Harvard College college students staged a die-in on the faculty’s Arthur M. Sackler Museum as we speak, April 20, demanding the removing of the opioid manufacturing household’s identify from the establishment’s partitions.
The scholars had been shepherded by members of the advocacy group PAIN (Prescription Habit Intervention Now) Sackler, who held their final motion on the museum nearly 5 years in the past. Since then, the group has reaped quite a few successes, persuading main museums and universities in america and Europe to separate themselves from the Sacklers. However they nonetheless haven’t persuaded the Harvard Artwork Museums — a triad of museums, certainly one of which is known as after a Sackler — the final within the nation to proceed displaying the disgraced household’s identify.
PAIN’s founder and chief, artist Nan Goldin, was not current on the motion however she spoke with college students by way of Zoom final night time after a screening of Laura Poitras’s documentary about her, All of the Magnificence and Bloodshed, on the faculty’s Division of Artwork, Movie, and Visible Research. The bitter irony of Harvard celebrating Goldin and her group’s successes whereas sustaining the Sackler identify glared as footage of PAIN’s 2018 protest on campus performed on the display screen. “Everyone must put their our bodies on the road now,” Goldin mentioned to a packed auditorium. “Issues are so darkish, and so they’re getting darker by the day.”
Solely a handful of scholars attending the screening knew of the shock motion on the Sackler Museum deliberate for the following day. An hour earlier than the motion at 12:30pm, they acquired an electronic mail blast with a name to hitch the protest. Dozens of them confirmed up on the museum’s atrium, the place they hurled pretend OxyContin vials and prescriptions to the ground and chanted slogans together with “disgrace on Sackler,” “take down their identify,” and “Sacklers lie, folks die” — phrases which have reverberated throughout PAIN’s protests all over the world.
“Harvard College, what are you ready for?” requested undergraduate pupil Claire Yoo, who emceed the motion along with PAIN’s Harry Cullen. “Sackler is only one identify to take away,” she continued, itemizing a number of buildings on campus named after identified enslavers. Harvard’s ties to slavery had been highlighted in a damning 2022 report by the college, exposing that 70 people had been enslaved by its former presidents, leaders, school, and workers. Just lately, college students circulated a petition calling to rename the John Winthrop Home, a dormitory constructing christened after the primary governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony who enslaved at the least seven folks. His descendant, additionally named John Winthrop, enslaved two people whereas instructing at Harvard and serving as its appearing president for one yr.
“If we take away one identify, we will take away all of them,” mentioned Yoo.
Jason Newton, a spokesperson for Harvard College, instructed Hyperallergic in an electronic mail remark: “The college has established a course of for contemplating de-naming areas, packages, or different entities. A proposal to de-name the Arthur M. Sackler Museum and the Arthur M. Sackler Constructing has been submitted and is at the moment below overview. ”
After the die-in, the scholars relocated to the museum’s steps, virtually shutting down the museum on a free-admission Thursday. There, they heard speeches from PAIN members and their friends, and continued their chants.
Not all passersby authorized of the protest. “It’s an artwork museum!” yelled a person who drove by. One other spectator, a Harvard professor who declined to reveal his identify, instructed Hyperallergic that “not all Sacklers are unhealthy,” repeating the frequent argument that Arthur Sackler died earlier than his brothers Mortimer and Raymond developed OxyContin, the extremely addictive drug that Purdue Pharma is infamous for advertising and marketing and over-prescribing.
That’s additionally the opinion of Harvard President Lawrence Bacow, who mentioned in 2019 that eradicating the Sackler identify can be “inappropriate.” PAIN member Megan Kapler has been rebutting this protection of Arthur Sackler for years.
“He was an absolute mastermind of medical promoting,” she mentioned throughout a Q&A session after the movie screening. “He was the genius behind Valium and wrote the blueprint of what his brothers would go on to make use of for OxyContin.”
Bridget O’Kelly and Jay Garg, two college students who filed a petition to rename the Sackler Museum, mentioned they’re hopeful that Harvard’s incoming president, Claudine Homosexual, will deliver a change of coverage.
“We’ve got an enormous quantity of help from school and the museum workers however they’re not expressing it publicly as a result of they don’t need to get in hassle with their departments or lose their jobs,” mentioned Garg.
In the meantime, Harvard introduced final week that it has named its Graduate College of Arts and Sciences after conservative megadonor Kenneth C. Griffin, who gave the college $300 million. Griffin has additionally given $5 million to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s political motion committee.
“It takes little or no time for Harvard to call a constructing after a corrupt billionaire, however a very long time to take it down,” Anna Correll, one of many college students on the protest, instructed Hyperallergic.
Editor’s Notice, 4/20/2023 7:53pm EDT: This text has been up to date with a remark from a Harvard College spokesperson.