An Open Letter to the Brown University Board of Trustees
Hold President Christina Paxson accountable for the deaths of Ella Cook, Mukhammad Aziz Umurzakov, and Nuno Loureiro
Dear Trustees of the Brown Corporation,
One month ago on December 13, Brown students Ella Cook and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzakov were killed at a final exam review session on campus. Two days later on December 15, the same man who took their lives murdered MIT Professor Nuno Loureiro at his home in Massachusetts. President Christina Paxson failed them as a leader - will you hold her accountable as stewards?
The President and Corporation’s most important duty is to keep Brown’s campus secure for the community. Brown has a $8 billion endowment, $2 billion annual budget, and 1,000+ surveillance cameras funded by charging students $80,000/year in tuition. Paxson earns a $3 million salary while employing ~4,000 administrators and ~100 public safety officers. Yet for five harrowing days, the Brown administration could not give the public any helpful descriptions of the suspect’s appearance, whereabouts, or clear video and photo footage.
Regardless of what you discover in your after-action report, the world has witnessed institutional level failure at Brown. The publicly known facts are embarrassing. In the weeks leading up to the attack, a janitor alerted campus security multiple times about the suspect. He was ignored and no precautions were taken. Two Brown police unions issued votes of no confidence against the police chief in August and October, yet nothing changed. The perpetrator claimed to have planned his attack for several semesters.
Brown never provided a list of witnesses to Providence Police while the suspect was on the loose. A homeless man living in the building cracked the case because he remembered the getaway car’s license plates. He deserves an award, but his heroism accentuates Brown’s incompetence. This was a man-made mistake, not a natural disaster. A travesty on top of a tragedy.
One month later, many critical questions around Brown’s response remain unanswered. Were any cameras disabled due to pressure from activist groups? Thousands of traumatized students are returning to campus for the spring semester. Tens of thousands of prospective students are reevaluating whether they should apply or enroll at Brown. Paxson has appointed the VP of Diversity & Inclusion to lead healing efforts. Many have lost trust that Brown’s current leadership will keep them safe. You must make courageous decisions to restore the tarnished brand once great university.
The only action taken thus far is that the Chief of the Department of Public Safety was placed on paid administrative leave. That is nowhere near enough. The buck stops with President Paxson. As Trustees of Brown, you are the only people who can hold her accountable. Firing her is the critical first step towards righting your sinking ship. The longer you protect her, the more the blame will spread to you. Will your names be written in the case study on why “elite” college campuses that obsess over safe spaces have become the most dangerous places in America?
As Trustees, you serve as the ultimate fiduciaries for Brown. The lawsuits will cost many millions. However, if you fail to take proper action the reputational damage you will do to a 262-year-old university is incalculable. Your charter states that trustees are responsible to “make good-faith decisions in Brown’s best interests, including but not limited to protecting the long-term institutional assets of the University and its reputation, and in compliance with Brown’s mission and the law… exercise the care an ordinarily prudent person in a similar position would exercise under similar circumstances, the foundation of which is being well-informed with regard to the issue(s) under discussion and consideration…”
Are you an ordinarily prudent person who will make good-faith decisions in Brown’s best interests? Over the past few years, several of your Ivy League peers have made difficult choices about their failed presidents. Harvard, Columbia, UPenn, and Cornell all appointed new leaders. While Claudine Gay, Minouche Shafik, Liz Magill, and Martha Pollack ostensibly resigned, there is no transparency behind the real decisions and reasons. The Brown Corporation’s charter has sworn you to confidentiality as well.
Will you force Christina Paxson to resign for the deaths of two students? If you do not by the end of your next meeting in February, your names and affiliations will be amplified to be as stained in blood as hers.
Choose wisely.
***AMPLIFY X LINK HERE:
Here are 25 questions that must be addressed in your after-action report:
For five days, why couldn’t Brown and Providence officials provide any description of the suspect other than a “man dressed in black”? Why did Brown never give the names of students in the review session classroom to the Providence Police as potential witnesses?
Why were short grainy videos and blurry photos the only visual evidence available? Were any security cameras in the area disabled due to pressure from activist groups to conceal illegal immigrants?
Why did it take 17 minutes for Brown’s Department of Public Safety to issue a lockdown alert after the first 911 call? Why did they update that a suspect in was in custody 30 minutes after the alert, then retract it 20 minutes later?
What led the police to detain and release a person of interest from Wisconsin hours after the attack? How did The Washington Post get his name and leak it? How much did this divert resources away from other leads during the critical first 24 hours? Did it help the suspect evade capture and kill the MIT professor 48 hours later?
After the MIT professor was killed, why did law enforcement insist that it was not connected to the Brown killings? If the suspect knew the MIT professor from their undergraduate studies in Portugal, why did he go after students he didn’t know from Brown first and two days before he targeted the man he knew? Why were Brown and Providence officials confident that there was no active threat after the Brown students were killed and before the MIT professor was killed?
Why was a homeless man living in the Barus & Holley building? Why was security not alerted after he confronted the shooter hours before the attack? Did a custodian tell security that the suspect had been loitering around the building for days leading up to the shooting? Why was a photo of him released much later than the suspect’s? If his memory of the suspect’s license plate cracked the case, then why wasn’t it shared with the public? When did DNA evidence confirm the shooter’s identity and why wasn’t that shared with the public?
Did President Paxson tell victim Ella Cook’s family she was targeted as a leader in the Brown Republican Club? How many times she was shot compared to other victims and was she shot first? Why was President Paxson on a private flight to DC that day, in the middle of final exams, and unable to answer basic questions about what was going on in that classroom? Why was President Paxson unaware that a Brown student had been scrubbed from all of Brown’s websites, as well as his social media accounts?
How much did the recent no confidence vote on the Brown public safety chiefs impact campus security? If Brown is a gun free zone, how did the suspect use a gun in it? How can the school assure students and parents that campus is safe?
Brown has prohibited use of the word accountability on its campus. It is a white supremacist concept you know
This wasn’t bad luck. It was elite negligence wrapped in administrative arrogance. When a university with billions in assets can’t issue a suspect description, can’t secure its own buildings, and can’t communicate honestly while a killer walks free, leadership has already failed. Presidents don’t get paid millions to preside over press releases and “healing circles.” They get paid to protect lives. Paxson didn’t. And trustees who hide behind process and paid leave are complicit. Universities that obsess over “safe spaces” while ignoring real security risks have inverted priorities. If accountability stops at mid-level scapegoats, then the board—not just the president—owns the bloodstain.