NYTimes | Two weeks after Tufts University became the first major university to remove the Sackler name from buildings and programs over the family’s role in the opioid epidemic,
members of the family are pushing back. A lawyer for some of the
Sacklers argued in a letter to the president of Tufts that the move was
unjustified and a violation of agreements made when the school wanted
the family’s financial help years ago.
The
letter described Tufts’s decision to remove the name as “contrary to
basic notions of fairness" and “a breach of the many binding commitments
made by the University dating back to 1980 in order to secure the
family’s support, including millions of dollars in donations for
facilities and critical medical research.”
Institutions
that have accepted financial support from the Sacklers have in recent
months faced growing cries to distance themselves from the family.
The
forceful response by Sackler family members now may be seen as a signal
to other institutions amid a flurry of announcements by major cultural
organizations that they would no longer take donations from the family.
The response also raised complicated legal questions about what room
institutions have to unilaterally remove a donor’s name long after a
gift has been accepted.
The lawyer, Robert Cordy, who represents the descendants of two of the
brothers who built Purdue Pharma, Raymond and Mortimer Sackler, wrote
that Tufts chose “to prioritize optics over a fair process.”
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