Brown University trustees remain silent after deadly campus murders

Brown University’s board of trustees, which includes a top bank CEO, billionaires, hedge fund and banking leaders, authors, professors, actresses and scientists, remained silent in the wake of the campus murders earlier this month.

Although the board’s primary duty is to maintain stewardship of the Ivy League university and does not oversee day-to-day operations, the group is the school’s highest governing body, is responsible for appointing and evaluating the college president, and approves strategic long-range strategy and planning for the top college.

The board regularly supervises the university rector and has authority over the president’s employment.

Trustees include prominent Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan, who serves as chairman of the board, Goldman Sachs Asset Management Chairman Rich Friedman, author and Stripe COO Claire Hughes Johnson, Blackstone Global Head of Multi-Asset Investment Joe Dowling, actress Margaret Munzer, former U.S. Rep. David Cicilline, Ami Kuan Danoff of Boston Legacy Football Club, and other banking leaders and billionaires.

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Fox News Digital reached out to all trustees on the board but did not receive a response.

Brown University President Christina Paxson has faced intense criticism for the university’s handling of both equipping the school with security resources to prevent the shooting and campus police’s failure to catch the killer in the wake of the murders.

Earlier this month, a lone gunman, whom police identified as Portuguese national Claudio Neves-Valente, scouted the campus before taking the lives of two Brown University students on Dec. 13. Investigators believe a homeless man living on campus was the primary source in identifying and ultimately locating the attacker.

Footage of Claudio Manuel Neves-Valente is shown on a projector screen at a news briefing in Providence, Rhode Island. The 48-year-old former student and Portuguese national has been identified as the gunman behind the mass shooting that killed two students and injured nine others. (Andrea Margolis/Fox News Digital)

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The homeless man, known by the nickname John, lived in the basement of Brown’s Barus and Holley engineering building. Police were unable to identify the person on their own and asked social media to help locate a person near the person of interest.

Questions remain about why a homeless person was allowed to take shelter in the basement of an Ivy League school.

There was limited surveillance at the building where the mass shooting occurred, and if the killer had been caught, the life of an MIT professor who was killed days later in his home by Neves-Valente might have been saved, authorities said.

Brown University victims Ella Cook and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, as well as murdered MIT professor Nuno Loureiro. (Instagram/elinacoutlakis/GoFundMe/Jake Belcher for MIT)

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A parent at the university told Boston Globe He had seen the alleged gunman about a dozen times before the attack, hiding in bathrooms to avoid being seen, and even reported the unusual activity to campus security in November.

Authorities found Neves-Valente dead by suicide in a warehouse in Salem, New Hampshire, on Thursday night.

In a statement following the discovery, Paxson condemned “gun violence,” took aim at “harmful personal information disclosure activity” and noted that there was “no indication of any concern regarding the conduct or public safety interactions” of Neves-Valente while she was briefly a student at Brown more than 20 years ago.

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Interior view of Barus & Holley Room 166 on the Brown University campus in Providence, RI At approximately 4:00 pm on Saturday, December 13, a masked man with a gun entered the review session in Barus & Holley Room 166 for the ECON 0110: “Principles of Economics” course, shouted something unintelligible, and opened fire. (Kenna Lee/The Brown Daily Herald)

“Following the shooting, we have seen harmful personal information exposed to many students, faculty and staff, and many offices remain committed to providing support,” Paxson said.

“We have also worked aggressively to combat disinformation in online media and activity that goes so far as to threaten individuals in our community,” the university president added.

“I don’t think the lack of cameras in that building had anything to do with what happened there,” he said when asked if the lack of cameras on campus was a factor in preventing the mass shooter from being caught.

Authorities said Paxson, whose annual salary exceeds $3 million in 2023, and the university were heavily criticized for their negligence in both protecting the campus and finding Neves-Valente, who killed two Ivy League students and then went on to take another life in Massachusetts.

Brown University President Christina H. Paxson speaks at a press conference after a mass shooting led to a campus quarantine on Dec. 13, 2025. (Getty)

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Sources told Fox News that the university was preparing to face lawsuits stemming from the shooting and confirmed Monday morning that they had hired former U.S. attorney Zachary Cunha to represent the Ivy League school.

Fox News Digital reached out to Brown University to see if the board planned to make any statements regarding the shooting, security measures or plans for Brown’s future but did not receive a response.

Preston Mizell is a writer for Fox News. Story tips can be sent to Preston.Mizell@fox.com and X @MizellPreston.