UConn Says It’s Repurposing Sackler Donations. What Does That Mean?

James Bliss for UConn Health Center

Bruce Mayer learned that he was losing his research endowment by hearing about it on the radio on his way home from work one drizzly Wednesday in October. By that time, both The Chronicle and the Associated Press had reported the news: The University of Connecticut was rerouting nearly all unspent donations from Raymond and Beverly Sackler to addiction research and education.

Mayer, a professor of genetics and genome sciences at UConn, studies cell signaling in cancer. He had received regular payouts from a Sackler-funded endowment for nearly two decades. On average, he would get about $25,000 a year, he said. It was money he could use for whatever his lab happened to need. “I understand the political situation,” he said, “but it’s going to have a negative impact on my lab, and that’s unfortunate.”

Like other institutions across the country, UConn is grappling with what to do with donations it received from members of the Sackler family, who are being blamed in lawsuits for starting and profiting from an epidemic of opioid addiction in America. The university received about $4.5 million from Raymond and Beverly Sackler from 1985 to 2014, for arts programs and scientific research unrelated to pain treatment or addiction.

Although Raymond died in 2017 and Beverly last month, several Sackler endowments continue to make money for UConn. After The Chronicle spoke with Sackler beneficiaries at the university in October, UConn announced the repurposing plan, which falls in line with what some philosophers say is the best use for morally troubled donations: fixing problems the money created.

But the way repurposing has played out reveals how messy it can be, in practice, to scrub a donation’s controversial origins. What happens to the funds’ current beneficiaries? To what extent do they deserve a say in what happens to the money — or even a warning of what’s to come?

‘Do Not Spend’

The University Senate’s executive committee had voted in March to “request that the university Board of Trustees remove the Sackler name from all facilities, titles, and programs,” and to recommend that the remaining Sackler money go to anti-addiction projects. The senate debated whether the university should seek the consent of current recipients of Sackler endowments.

According to the meeting’s minutes, some members argued that the senate could not, and should not, be able to take away a department’s funding without permission. Others argued that the senate was well within its rights to suggest such a move. “We are speaking for the university and must stand for the moral and ethical integrity of the university,” one senator, Veronica Makowsky, a professor of English, was quoted as saying.

University officials had talked with “about half” of the Sackler recipients and didn’t get pushback to the idea of repurposing the money, the March minutes said.

The senate chose not to specify whether officials should get permission for repurposing from Sackler beneficiaries, said Hedley C. Freake, the committee’s chair.

University leaders agreed that rerouting the money was the best choice, and then froze the funds, said a spokesman, Mike Enright. One recipient, however, reported to The Chronicle in October that she could still see the funds in her computer system.

UConn’s leaders are in talks with members of the Sackler family, whose permission they need, legally, to change where the money goes.

Nearly a month after the public decision was made, two beneficiaries of Sackler endowments say that no university official has spoken with them about ending their endowments. Their only notice? A note in their regular financial statements saying, “Do not spend.” The statements came out weeks after the public announcement.

Despite the senate’s vote, Stormy J. Chamberlain, a geneticist who studies rare diseases, wrote in an email: “I haven’t been told to stop using the ‘Sackler Associate Professor’ title. There has been no clear communication from the university about this.”

“Seems like everybody’s afraid to go on the record, so to speak,” Mayer said. “It’s irritating.”

According to Freake, the senate-committee chair, Chamberlain and Mayer should have been notified. Officials of the UConn Foundation, the university’s primary fund-raising body, “attempted to talk to the faculty,” he said. “Whether they got a response or not is something else.”

Two beneficiaries of Sackler endowments at UConn didn’t agree to be interviewed about what’s happened since the university’s repurposing announcement. Glenn Mitoma is director of the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center on human rights, which used to host the annual Sackler Lecture Series. He didn’t return a call or an email.

Anne D’Alleva, dean of the School of Fine Arts, where the Sacklers funded an artist-in-residence program and a music-composition prize, referred The Chronicle to Enright. Because the University Senate’s resolution in March allows for Sackler money to go to arts-and-humanities programs “that deal with the effects of drug addiction,” it seems possible that Mitoma’s and D’Alleva’s departments may not entirely lose that funding. But Enright couldn’t confirm in time whether that was true.

Both Chamberlain and Mayer were disappointed with the university’s decision. Mayer said his Sackler funds, which supported his lab’s cancer research, were “being used for a good purpose.”

“It’s a shame that the money may be rerouted to a program that isn’t well thought-out just because of appearances,” Chamberlain wrote. “Don’t forget that this money was given to the recipients for research merit.”

She said she would prefer that the university stop taking additional Sackler money and remove the Sackler name, but not redirect the funds.

Francie Diep is a staff reporter covering money in higher ed. Follow her on Twitter @franciediep, or email her at francie.diep@chronicle.com.