Removing Sackler Family Name from Harvard University Museum

How it started

Dec 16, 2019 · Proposed by Councillors McGovern, Zondervan, and Simmons, Vice Mayor Mallon, Councillors Kelley and Carlone, Vice Mayor Devereux, Mayor Siddiqui, and Councillor Toomey: a formal request from the Council to the administration.

What happened

Dec 16, 2019 · ✅ Order adopted as amended

Present and voting at this meeting (9)

Alanna Mallon
Craig A. Kelley
Dennis Carlone
E. Denise Simmons
Jan Devereux
Marc McGovern
Quinton Zondervan
Sumbul Siddiqui
Timothy J. Toomey

Adopted by voice vote. A voice vote records the outcome, not individual positions. No member's yes or no is on the record (though a member can ask to be recorded in the negative in the minutes). Showing the members who cast recorded votes at this meeting. Rule 6 requires a roll call for spending over $50 or on any member's request; state law requires one for every vote when a member participates remotely. · photos: City of Cambridge

What’s next

⌛ No response on the docket: nothing has been filed back under this request's number. Answers sometimes arrive as other items; this ledger tracks only this one.

The document Agenda item attachment · 1 page

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ORIGINAL ORDER

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 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 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.

🗓 The meeting where this was taken up: Dec 16, 2019