Erasing the Sackler name not easy

There is finality about the way a Yale University spokeswoman said “no Yale faculty member currently holds a Sackler chair.”

A chair, in the parlance of higher education, is a coveted thing, and it’s no secret that individuals or families with lots of money like to endow academic positions in the name of those believed to be worthy of such an honor.

Yale, for example, had the David A. Sackler Professorship of Pharmacology.

And even as Connecticut Attorney General William Tong this month announced that Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family will pay $6 billion in a nationwide settlement for the OxyContin maker’s role in the deadly opioid epidemic, Yale was making good on its decision to rid itself of the Sackler name.

The other Sackler-related position, The Richard and Jonathan Sackler Professorship in Internal Medicine, was already empty and Yale spokeswoman Karen Peart told The Courant it would not be filled.

Peart also told The Courant that Yale reached the decision in 2019 not to accept future gifts from the Sackler family.

She also said the university made a decision in 2021 “to pursue a separation from the Sackler name and has been actively working on specific plans consistent with that decision, which we expect to announce soon.” Peart further noted that “the university has no plan to fill the Sackler chairs.”

Those are the right moves for Yale, the state’s only Ivy League school, and it sends a very strong message, as the Sackler family ponies up the money, sells or dissolves Stamford-based Purdue by 2024 and removes itself from involvement in the opioid business both in the United States and abroad.

The particulars of the settlement were announced by Tong on March 3 and include that the Sackler family must permit institutions with buildings or scholarships to remove their name.

Tong said Connecticut will receive about $95 million to be used for opioid treatment and prevention.

But while Yale and other institutions respond correctly by removing the name that has brought pain to so many, it remains to be seen whether the cleansing of the Sackler name and nearly $100 million for treatment and prevention here will do anything to help ease the pain of those in Connecticut or anywhere who have lost loved ones as a result of the opioid crisis.

It’s a crisis Connecticut has faced for years.

During a recent hearing held virtually in Federal Bankruptcy Court there was an outpouring of statements from Americans who were able to confront some members of the Sackler family they blame for fueling it, The Associated Press reported.

The agony families have faced was clear, with forgiveness likely hard to find.

“I hope that every single victim’s face haunts your every waking moment and your sleeping ones, too,” said Ryan Hampton, of Las Vegas, who AP reported has been in recovery for seven years after an addiction that began with an OxyContin.

“You poisoned our lives and had the audacity to blame us for dying,” Hampton said.

“I hope you hear our names in your dreams. I hope you hear the screams of the families who find their loved ones dead on the bathroom floor. I hope you hear the sirens. I hope you hear the heart monitor as it beats along with a failing pulse.”

As the Purdue settlement evolves and their money is reduced by going to a just cause, we can all hope the name Sackler fades from the forefront even as it is etched in our memories.

— Hartford Courant, March 20