It takes very little time for Harvard to name a building after a corrupt billionaire, but a long time to take it down.
One of the best films I saw this past year was Laura Poitras’s documentary All the Beauty and Bloodshed.
It was nominated for an Oscar.
The film tells two stories that are organically overlaid.
The first arc of the film is about the life of artist Nan Golden, a wonderful and influential photographer.
The other layer is the movement Goldin led to remove the Sackler family name from museums and other institutions.
The billionaire Sackler family made their billions from marketing opioids which became over prescribed causing addiction and death to thousands.
They are the poster family for hugely profitable Big Pharma and the evils of capitalism.
Harvard students stage a lie-in to protest the Sackler name on campus buildings.
Nearly 500,000 Americans died of opioid overdoses between 1999 and 2019, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
Following a showing of All the Beauty and the Bloodshed yesterday at Harvard:
A group of about 100 Harvard University students staged a die-in at the school’s Arthur M. Sackler Museum today, April 20, demanding the removal of the opioid manufacturing family’s name from the institution’s walls.
The students were shepherded by members of the advocacy group PAIN (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now) Sackler, who held their last action at the museum almost five years ago. Since then, the group has reaped numerous successes, persuading major museums and universities in the United States and Europe to separate themselves from the Sacklers. But they still haven’t persuaded the Harvard Art Museums — a triad of museums, one of which is named after a Sackler — the last in the country to continue displaying the disgraced family’s name.
Reported The Harvard Crimson:
PAIN activist Harry Cullen led the crowd of protesters through a call and response statement condemning Harvard’s continued association with the Sackler family.
“We are here today to call out Harvard for supporting the Sacklers — a family of billionaires that profited off our pain for generations starting with Arthur Sackler,” Cullen said, echoed by a crowd of protesters. “Five years ago, Nan Goldin and PAIN came here to show Harvard the way to reject the Sackler legacy. Now Harvard students have brought PAIN back to repeat our demands: take down the Sackler name.
Some of the student protesters pointed out the history of Harvard’s connection to slavery and the practice of naming rights being given to enslavers.
“Harvard University, what are you waiting for?” asked undergraduate student Claire Yoo, who emceed the action together with PAIN’s Harry Cullen. “Sackler is just one name to remove,” she continued, listing several buildings on campus named after known enslavers. Harvard’s ties to slavery were highlighted in a damning 2022 report by the school, exposing that 70 individuals were enslaved by its former presidents, leaders, faculty, and staff. Recently, students circulated a petition calling to rename the John Winthrop House, a dormitory building christened after the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony who enslaved at least seven people. His descendant, also named John Winthrop, enslaved two individuals while teaching at Harvard and serving as its acting president for one year.
Harvard students also linked the the Sackler protests to naming rights bought by contemporary billionaires like Ken Griffin.
Harvard announced last week that it has named its Graduate School of Arts and Sciences after conservative megadonor Kenneth C. Griffin, who gave the school $300 million. Griffin has also given $5 million to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s political action committee.
Griffin, formerly of Chicago, is a right-wing hedge funder who recently moved his operation to the more politically friendly confines of Ron DeSantis’ Florida.
His name can be found on institutions and spaces all over Chicago including Millennium Park and the Art Institute.
“It takes very little time for Harvard to name a building after a corrupt billionaire, but a long time to take it down,” said Anna Correll, one of the students at the Harvard protest.