No, Harvard does not have a statue honoring the Confederacy. If they did we’d have had massive protests and likely direct action to take it down.
But Harvard apparently doesn’t have to worry about public protests for accepting the patronage of a family and corporation that is currently fueling the opioid epidemic in the US that is killing an estimated 35,000 people a year in this country.
I’m talking about the Sackler family and Purdue Pharma, who Attorney General Maura Healy is suing for potentially billions of dollars in damages for their role in death of hundreds of Massachusetts citizens.
If you’re an art lover, or a student at Tufts, the Sackler name is very familiar. That’s because of all the buildings, academic departments and endowed chairs that opioid blood money has financed, thanks to the contributions of the Sackler family.
On the one hand I’m surprised that political activists are giving this family, and the institutions taking their money, a free pass. Given that Brookline renamed a school after it discovered the man who donated all the land to establish Brookline apparently owned one slave in 1744, or that Boston renamed Yawkey Way because the former Red Sox owner was a racist. So we are ready to punish those from history because of their bad behavior and beliefs, but the “PC Police” gives a pass to institutions actively taking financial support from a family CURRENTLY responsible for a the deaths of more than 200,000 Americans since the late 1990s. (And I say responsible, not based on allegations in the Healy suit, but based on a 2007 Guilty Plea Purdue Pharma entered into federal court…a guilty pleas that very much mirror the allegations Healy is suing them for.)
One would think that the guardian of “truth” in the area, the Boston Globe, would have something to say about this. In fact they did…albeit in an indirect and despicable way. Instead of pointing out all the powerful lily white institutions in the area getting support from blood money, they ran a front page story about a black man working as a sales rep for a selling an obscure opioid and suggesting HE was responsible for the opioid epidemic in Boston. Can hypocrisy reach any higher?!?!?!?!
I’ve rarely seen such a blatant example of clickbait on BMG. To answer the question I think disclosure would be appropriate, and don’t fund “research” where the financiers have a stake in the outcome, but I would not refuse the money. I’m reminded of the story about the priest who accepted a generous contribution on behalf of his church from a notorious gangster. One of the parishioners protested that the money was obtained through criminal enterprise and said it was the “Devil’s money”. The priest replied, “In that case, the Devil has had it long enough. Now let’s see what the Lord can do with it.”
Really, Harvard is God in your example. Taking any kind of blood money, whether it’s Harvard or a Church, I’m reminded of Machiavelli’s the Ends Justify the Means.
If the ends are ultimately better, that’s fine with me in this case. The only question I would ask is whether the donation were legal.
” . . .blatant example of clickbait”? What does that even mean? Do you imagine that you more commonly see more insidious examples of clickbait. on BMG?
Clickbait is a headline a bit misleading, but designed to get people to read, usually by alluding to a hot topic. In this case the diarist made us think that Harvard University had a statue honoring a Confederate leader on its campus, which of course has been very controversial of late.
While I concede the click-bait quality of the headline. That was not my intent, but rather a (maybe to subtle) jab at the PC left for getting their ire up over the mistakes of the past, while literally whistling past contemporary symbols of the injustices brought upon the new gilded age in the early 21st Century.
Arthur Sackler died, and the museum was established, before Purdue ever produced opioids, right?
I think the short answer is “no.” https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/30/the-family-that-built-an-empire-of-pain
You can find lots of similar articles online.
Mark Zuckerberg will destroy more lives with Facebook than opioids will. Give the money back, Harvard!