The Sackler family, currently facing an ongoing lawsuit having been accused of fuelling the opioid crisis in the United States, has previously funded multiple lectures, PhD studentships, and scholarships, which still exist across multiple departments in Cambridge, as well as a college.

Last Sunday, photographer and activist Nan Goldin staged a protest against the acceptance of donations from the Sackler family at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, which features the Sackler Centre for Arts Education.

Brothers Raymond, Mortimer and Arthur Sackler created the company Purdue Pharma, which invented the drug OxyContin, in 1996. OxyContin is considered to be the root of the opioid addiction crisis in the United States. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, as of January 2019, on average every single day over 130 people in the United States die after overdosing on opioids.

The Sackler family has been accused of deceiving the public and medical profession of the negative side effects of OxyContin, and is being sued on multiple fronts. It has also been sued in the past: in 2015, it settled a $24 million lawsuit with the state of Kentucky, though it did not admit any wrongdoing. In 2017, the state of Ohio led a lawsuit against five major pharmaceutical companies, including Purdue Pharma, for false advertising and understating the addictive effects of these drugs.

The Sackler family’s Cambridge connections include sponsorship from the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Foundation, which funded an annual lecture series, under the foundation’s name, at the Institute of Astronomy, the Department of Archaeology, and the Department of Medicine. It has previously made donations to fund PhD studentships in the departments of Psychiatry, Physics and Medicine.

The Dr. Mortimer and Theresa Sackler Foundation funded a 2016 joint research programme on the interoceptive abilities of finance traders. Cambridge participated in this programme, along with the University of Sussex and Queensland University of Technology in Australia.

A University spokesperson told Varsity that the University’s Committee on Benefactions and External and Legal Affairs (CBELA) “fully verifies donations”, while the committee “continues to review engagements using all available information, including any new information that has emerged.”

The spokesperson added that the University has not received any donations from the Sackler Foundation since 2015.

In 2013, the foundation funded a non-stipendiary research fellowship at Christ’s College for up to two years. The programme was offered to post-doctoral researchers working in Chemistry or Applied Mathematics.

Two Sackler Lecture Theatres currently exist in Cambridge: one at the the Institute of Astronomy and the other at the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research. The Sackler family were also one of the many donors that made the construction of the Maxwell Centre possible in 2015.

As well as Cambridge, the Sackler family have made donations to Oxford University, as well as many prominent universities in the United States, including Harvard and Princeton, and a variety of museums and galleries, including the Tate Modern, the British Museum and the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

Dr. James Barrett, Deputy Director of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, which holds the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Distinguished Lecture in Archaeology in honour of Professor Norman Hammond, told Varsity that the Department is “aware of the emerging and on-going situation [of the opioid crisis] through press coverage”.

He added that they “are concerned in any situation that may negatively affect human wellbeing”, and is “keeping in touch with the Central University, wishing to react responsibly”. He confirmed to Varsity that the Department of Archeology is not anticipating any new donations from the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Foundation.

Christ’s College and the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research did not respond to Varsity’s request for comment.