… which the university will ignore.
[T]he Tufts administration still has not openly acknowledged the [opioid merchants] Sacklers’ role in fueling the opioid crisis. In light of the recent exposés, Tufts should publicly recognize its own complicity in receiving money tainted by the epidemic, resolving to take an active stance against it. In order to align its values, Tufts should change the name of its biomedical school to better reflect the mission of the institution. With any remaining funds from the Sackler family, Tufts should fund research grants for the opioid crisis and further support outreach programs for its victims.
[President] Monaco and the Tufts Board of Trustees should revoke the honorary degree conferred on Raymond Sackler posthumously. There is past precedent for this. Bill Cosby, although never found guilty of sexual assault, had his honorary degree revoked by Tufts. Someone the university has honored has committed an egregious moral, if not illegal, offense, and the university must withdraw its support.
Tufts won’t ignore the, er, Sackler problem forever. But, like Yale, it will hem and haw and harrumph as long as it possibly can.
Will it, like SUNY Buffalo, still burdened with the risible Kapoor School of Pharmacy, decide (Buffalo will probably decide – especially if their man goes to jail) to desacklerize (Clever, UD. Why is it clever? Because it’s very close to desacralize, see.) its biomed school?
Probably. The Sacklers are still dumping their opioids all over Asia. But the decision will be long in coming. From Yale and from Tufts we will hear a long involved contradictory emotional story about what a blessing opioids have been for the world though unfortunately… I mean, to be sure…
November 15th, 2017 at 10:51AM
… and, all things considered, at the end of the day, when all is said and done, in the final analysis, considering every aspect, our decision will be to cross our fingers and to hope those snarky buggers just go away.
November 15th, 2017 at 11:01AM
adam: It’s not the snarky buggers they have to worry about. It’s American journalism. Eventually the NYT will pull it all together: SUNY Buffalo, Tufts, Yale, others. And then no opiate will take away the pain.
November 15th, 2017 at 1:33PM
Yes, UD, let us hope so. Pain resulting from poor publicity will follow pressure from the press but real pain will come after penalties are applied. Are we clear who will deliver on that? For the institutions and also for the individual academic leaders?
November 15th, 2017 at 6:10PM
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/05/26/elderly-trump-university-plaintiffs-die-waiting-checks/102193734/
November 16th, 2017 at 10:56AM
Much of the Sackler philanthropy – to Tufts, the Smithsonian, elsewhere – actually predates OxyContin. That money largely came, IIRC, from Valium.