Sackler fundraising efforts leave Oxford looking amoral and greedy

Amoral and greedy – that’s how the University of Oxford has been left looking following revelations published in the Financial Times that it actively solicited Sackler family until very recently.   

Writing for UniversityWorldNews the University of Cape Town’s Andrew Wigley described as egregious the solicitation of money from the Sacklers by senior office holders at Oxford at a time when other institutions ranging from the Metropolitan Museum of Art to Yale University were removing the Sackler name from their infrastructure.

The Sackler family are the former owners of Purdue Pharma which in 2020 agreed a settlement of more than US$8 billion over its role in fuelling the United States opioid epidemic . The claims made by the Financial Times show that the University of Oxford’s approaches appeared to have been made after the family had been heavily criticised in a US Congressional hearing in December 2020 in which members refused to bear responsibility or apologise for their part in Purdue Pharma’s disgraced operations.

Andrew Wigley, the University of Cape Town’s International Development Director, said:

“What happens at Oxford matters because, along with Cambridge, it ranks as one of the world’s leading public universities. They set the bar for state-funded institutions around the world. The Sackler affair begs the question: how a sophisticated institution with a highly respected fundraising operation such as Oxford could have made such a misjudgement?

“In pursuing Sackler family philanthropy, Oxford - which sits on a £6 billion (US$7.2 billion) endowment fund, an unfathomable amount from the perspective of an African university - has been left looking amoral and greedy”.

ENDS

To read the article in full, please go to https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20230307095229407