“The donations he made were made in good faith and for the right reasons, so I guess they were positive,” Dr. Berman said. “Unfortunately, the association with the name in the public’s mind is not positive.” He said he had tried for a year and a half to explain the distinction between the family’s branches and their different roles in opioid marketing, but without success.

“The Sackler name is a problem, whether it’s the Arthur Sackler name, or all the Sackler names,” he said.

Student activists said they were happy with the move. Nicholas Verdini, 24, a first-year medical student who lobbied for the change, ran outside on Thursday to look at the sign as soon as he received an email from Tufts informing him that the names were being removed.

“I was genuinely shocked,” Mr. Verdini said. “It was emotional, not only for the cause, but because I lost my sister to the opioid epidemic, and it felt like a big win for her.”

Two weeks ago, Mr. Verdini addressed Tufts’ board of trustees and told them about his sister, Katelyn Hart, who was 25 when she died of an overdose. He said several trustees approached him afterward, visibly moved by what he had said.

“The response was much greater than I was expecting,” he said. “It can’t be easy for them to go back on a contract, on a commitment that they made in exchange for a large amount of money. It can’t be an easy decision to make, but I think it was the right one.”

The three Sackler brothers — sons of a Brooklyn greengrocer, all of whom became psychiatrists — and their descendants gave lavishly to prestigious universities for decades, including $60 million in the last five years, The Associated Press has reported.