Colleges received millions from Sacklers

Yale among top recipients of donations from family that owned opioid maker

Prestigious universities around the world have accepted at least $60 million over the past five years from the family that owns the maker of OxyContin, even as the company became embroiled in lawsuits related to the opioid epidemic, financial records show.

Some of the donations arrived before recent lawsuits blaming Purdue Pharma for its role in the opioid crisis. But at least nine schools accepted gifts in 2018 or later, when states and counties across the country began efforts to hold members of the family accountable for Purdue’s actions. The largest gifts in that span went to Imperial College London, the University of Sussex and Yale University.

Major beneficiaries of Sackler family foundations also include the University of Oxford in England and Rockefeller, Cornell and Columbia universities in New York, according to tax and charity records reviewed by The Associated Press.

In total, at least two dozen universities have received gifts from the Sackler family since 2013, ranging from $25,000 to more than $10 million, the records show.

Some skeptics see the donations as an attempt to salvage the family’s reputation.

“Money from the Sacklers should be understood as blood money,“said Dr. Andrew Kolodny, a leading critic of the family and Purdue who has testified against the company in court and heads a program on opioid policy at Brandeis University, which was not among the schools identified in tax records as receiving donations from the Sacklers.

“Universities shouldn’t take it, and universities that have taken it should give it back.”

Representatives of Sackler family members declined to comment.

The AP reviewed charitable giving from more than a dozen Sackler family foundations as reported to the Internal Revenue Service, the Canada Revenue Agency and the Charity Commission for England and Wales. The recipients included schools in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Israel.

For decades, the family has been a major philanthropic figure in the worlds of art, medicine and education.

They were listed by Forbes magazine in 2016 as one of the nation’s 20 wealthiest families, with holdings of $13 billion.

Much of their giving has fueled research in genetics and brain development. Other gifts supported medical schools, student scholarships and faculty jobs. It amounts to a small fraction of universities’ overall fundraising, but schools say the money has been a boon to important programs.