Removing Sackler Family Name from Harvard University Museum

City of Cambridge O-9 ORIGINAL ORDER IN CITY COUNCIL December 16, 2019 MAYOR MCGOVERN WHEREAS: Members of the Harvard community, including students, alumni, parents, and faculty have compellingly and persistently called upon the university to remove the Sackler name from its art museum for the role that the Sackler family and Purdue Pharma played in creating and profiting from the opioid epidemic; and WHEREAS: Institutions the world over are reexamining their relationship to the Sackler family and several, including Tufts University, are choosing to remove the name from their buildings; and WHEREAS: From 2014 to 2018, Middlesex County saw the highest number of deaths by opioid- related overdose in the state with a confirmed 2,182 individuals succumbing to the epidemic, 124 of which perished in Cambridge; now therefore be it RESOLVED: That the City Council admonishes the Harvard University administration to acquiesce to calls from their community to strip the Sackler family name from its art museum; and be it further RESOLVED: That the City Council joins activists and students in requesting that the Arthur M. Sackler Museum be renamed, and in seeking accountability to the thousands of people lost in the ongoing opioid epidemic.