Tel Aviv University has removed the name of the Sackler family from its Faculty of Exact Sciences, the final department on its campus that was still named for the family tied to the U.S. opioid crisis, the school said on Thursday, noting that its removal cleared the way for a major new naming donation.

The move closes out a relationship that ran for half a century and follows the same path the university took with its medical faculty — a renaming that preceded a $125 million gift last year, the largest in TAU’s history.  

TAU President Ariel Porat said the change was made with the Sackler family’s approval. It is meant to help secure a significant gift to strengthen research and teaching in physics, mathematics, chemistry, computer science and geophysics. 

This is the latest in a series of erasures of the Sackler name in recent years, in light of the family’s responsibility for the opioid epidemic, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has tied to more than 500,000 American overdose deaths from 1999 through 2020. The family name has also been removed from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Louvre, the Guggenheim and the research halls of Tufts and the University of Oxford. 

The removal of the Sackler name has also prompted broader debates over institutions’ acceptance of donations from individuals and companies tied to immoral or questionable behavior. To some, organizations should ensure that their funding comes from reputable sources, while to others, these donations — whatever their origins — can be used to benefit society.

“The Sackler family’s contributions over the years laid the foundation for research and exceptional scientific achievements across a range of scientific fields,” Tel Aviv University said in a statement. 

“The Sackler family has assisted Tel Aviv University in this renaming initiative with the intention of helping the University secure a significant new donation to strengthen research and teaching in the exact sciences for the benefit of the State of Israel and beyond,” the university said.

TAU’s relationship with the family ran deep. The Sacklers were among the university’s foundational donors, and the medical faculty carried the family name for 50 years, honoring brothers Arthur, Mortimer and Raymond Sackler. Arthur had divested from Purdue Pharma years before the development of OxyContin — a commonly prescribed opioid that is widely blamed for sparking the epidemic — a point his descendants stress. 

The unwinding of this long-standing relationship came in stages. TAU quietly dropped the name from its U.S.-facing medical program in 2022. In June 2023, the university and the Sacklers issued a joint statement removing the name from the Faculty of Medicine. It cited a desire to help TAU raise funds and open naming opportunities to new donors and gave no other reason. A prestigious biophysics prize lost the Sackler name in 2024. 

Now, with another building open for naming, TAU is betting the exact sciences faculty can follow the medical school’s path.