BOSTON (AP) — Harvard University has decided against removing the name of a family whose company makes the powerful painkiller OxyContin from buildings on its campus, despite protests from parents whose children died of fatal overdoses.

The Harvard Corporation’s decision last month to keep the Arthur M. Sackler name on a museum building and a second building bucks the trend of several institutions around the world removing the Sackler name in recent years.

Among the first universities to do so was Tufts University, which announced in 2019 that it would remove the Sackler name from all programs and facilities on its Boston health sciences campus. The Louvre Museum in Paris and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York have also removed the Sackler name. Signage at London’s Tate Modern and Tate Britain and New York’s Guggenheim Museum have also been removed.

Harvard’s move, confirmed Thursday, drew anger from those who pushed for the name change, as well as groups like the anti-opioid group Prescription Addiction Intervention Now (or PAIN). Founded by photographer Nan Goldin, who was addicted to OxyContin from 2014 to 2017, the group has held protests against the Sackler name at numerous museums.

“Harvard’s continued commitment to the Sackler name is an insult to overdose victims and their families,” PAIN said in a statement Friday. “It is time for Harvard to stand with its students and live up to its mission to be a sanctuary of higher historical learning and an institution that embodies the best of human values.”

Mika Simoncelli, a Harvard graduate who organized a student protest against the name with members of PAIN in 2023, called the decision “shameful.”

“Even after receiving a strong, thorough renaming proposal and launching numerous protests from students and community members against the Sackler name, Harvard lacks the moral clarity to make a change that should have been made years ago,” they said in an email interview Friday. “Do they really think they are better than the Louvre?”

OxyContin was first introduced to the market in 1996, and Purdue Pharma’s aggressive marketing of the drug is often cited as the trigger for the nationwide opioid epidemic, leading doctors to prescribe painkillers without considering the risk of addiction.

The drug and the Stamford, Connecticut-based company became synonymous with the crisis, even though the majority of drugs prescribed and taken were generics. Opioid overdose deaths have continued to rise, reaching 80,000 in recent years, most of them due to fentanyl and other synthetic drugs.

The Harvard report cast doubt on Arthur Sackler’s connection to OxyContin in its decision, as he died nine years before the painkiller was introduced. His legacy was described as “complex, ambiguous and controversial.”

The proposal was put forward in 2022 by a campus group, Harvard College Overdose Prevention and Education Students. The university said it would not comment beyond the contents of the report.

“The committee was not persuaded by the argument that responsibility for the advertising abuse that fueled the opioid epidemic lies with anyone other than those who abused the promotion of opioids,” the report said.

“There is no certainty that he would have marketed OxyContin – knowing that it was fatally addictive on a large scale – using the same aggressive methods that he used to market other drugs,” it continued. “The committee was not prepared to accept the general principle that an innovator is necessarily culpable if his innovation, developed at a particular time and in a particular context, is later misused by others in ways that may not have been originally foreseen.”

A spokesman for Arthur Sackler’s family did not respond to a request for comment.

In June, the Supreme Court rejected a nationwide settlement with OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma that would have protected members of the Sackler family from civil lawsuits over the negative effects of opioids but also provided billions of dollars to combat the opioid epidemic.

The Sacklers would have contributed up to $6 billion and given up ownership of the company, but kept billions more. The agreement stipulated that the company would emerge from bankruptcy as an independent company and use its profits for treatment and prevention. Mediation talks are currently underway to reach a new agreement. If no agreement is reached, family members could face lawsuits.

Michael Casey, The Associated Press