In surprise 'die-in', protesters demand Harvard remove Sackler's name

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — A group of about 100 Harvard University students staged a die-in at the school’s Arthur M. Sackler Museum today, April 20, demanding the name removal of the opioid-making family of the walls of the institution.

The students were guided by members of the advocacy group PAIN (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now) Sackler, who held their last action at the museum almost five years ago. Since then, the group has reaped many successes, persuading major museums and universities in the United States and Europe to part ways with the Sacklers. But they still haven’t convinced the Harvard Art Museums – a triad of museums, one of which is named after a Sackler – the last in the country to continue displaying the disgraced family’s name.

“Do you think you are better than the Louvre? read one of the banners.

PAIN founder and leader artist Nan Goldin was not present for the action but spoke to students via Zoom last night after a screening of Laura Poitras’ documentary about her, All the beauty and bloodshed, in the school’s Department of Art, Film and Visual Studies. The bitter irony of Harvard celebrating Goldin and his band’s successes while retaining the Sackler name dazzled on-screen footage of the 2018 PAIN protest on campus. “Everyone needs to put their bodies on the line now,” Goldin told a packed auditorium. “Things are so dark, and they are getting darker every day.”

Nan Goldin and filmmaker Laura Poitras speaking to Harvard students after the documentary screening *All the bloodshed and beauty*

Only a handful of students attending the screening knew of the surprise action at the Sackler Museum scheduled for the next day. An hour before the action at 12:30 p.m., they received an email with a call to join the protest. Dozens of them showed up in the museum’s atrium, where they threw fake OxyContin vials and prescriptions on the floor and chanted slogans such as “shame on Sackler”, “remove their name” and ” the Sacklers lie, people die” – words that reverberated through PAIN’s protests around the world.

“Harvard University, what are you waiting for? asked undergraduate Claire Yoo, who hosted the action with PAIN’s Harry Cullen. “Sackler is just a name to drop,” she continued, listing several buildings on campus named after known slavers. Harvard’s links to slavery were highlighted in a damning report 2022 by the school, revealing that 70 people were enslaved by its former presidents, leaders, faculty and staff. Recently, students circulate a petition calling for renaming the John Winthrop House, a dormitory named after the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony who enslaved at least seven people. His descendant, also named John Winthrop, enslaved two people while teaching at Harvard and serving as its acting president for a year.

“Shame on Sackler,” chanted the students.

A hundred students took part in the surprise action.

“If we delete one name, we can delete all of them,” Yoo said.

Jason Newton, spokesperson for Harvard University, said Hyperallergic in an emailed comment: “The university has established a process to consider naming spaces, programs, or other entities. A proposal to name the Arthur M. Sackler Museum and the Arthur M. Sackler Building has been submitted and is currently under review.”

After the die-in, the students moved to the museum steps, virtually closing the museum on a free-entry Thursday. There they heard speeches from PAIN members and their peers, and continued their chanting.

Not all passers-by approved of the demonstration. “It’s an art museum!” shouted a passing man. Another viewer, a Harvard professor who declined to release his name, said Hyperallergic that “not all Sacklers are bad,” repeating the common argument that Arthur Sackler died before his brothers Mortimer and Raymond developed OxyContin, the highly addictive drug that Purdue Pharma is known for marketing and overprescribing .

The students closed the museum after the die-in

“Harvard University, what are you waiting for? asked one of the students.

This is also the opinion of the president of Harvard, Lawrence Bacow, who said in 2019 that removing the Sackler name would be “inappropriate”. PAIN member Megan Kapler has been refuting this Arthur Sackler defense for years.

“He was an absolute mastermind of medical advertising,” she said during a Q&A session after the film screened. “He was the genius behind Valium and wrote the blueprint for what his brothers were going to use for OxyContin.”

Protesters attached fake OxyContin prescription notes to Sackler’s name.

Bridget O’Kelly and Jay Garg, two students who filed a petition to rename the Sackler museum, said they hoped new Harvard president Claudine Gay would bring about policy change.

“We have tremendous support from faculty and staff at the museum, but they don’t express it publicly because they don’t want to get in trouble with their departments or lose their jobs,” Garg said.

Meanwhile, Harvard announced last week that he named its graduate school of arts and sciences after conservative megadonor Kenneth C. Griffin, who gave the school $300 million. Griffin also donated $5 million to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ Political Action Committee.

“It takes a very short time at Harvard to name a building after a corrupt billionaire, but a long time to tear it down,” said Anna Correll, one of the students at the protest. Hyperallergic.