Brown shooting suspect: gruelling academic climate may have taken mental toll, say ex-classmates | Brown University shooting

As investigators in Massachusetts try to piece together the killings of two Brown University students and an MIT physics professor, former classmates of the gunman and one of the victims are asking whether the roots of the tragedy lie in their shared experiences at a top university in Portugal.

Suspected gunman Cláudio Valente and one of those killed, Nuno FG Loureiro, were educated at the University of Lisbon’s prestigious and highly demanding engineering and technology school, known locally as Técnico, and both graduated in 2000.

Contemporaries of the two men describe the academic environment as emotionally draining. Only one person was willing to go on the record, but several others expressed similar views.

Valente was noted to be intelligent and competitive but willing to help his colleagues. He finished first in his class with an average grade of 19 out of 20, an unusually high score for Técnico. Loureiro, said to be an excellent student but more docile than Valente, finished school with an average grade of 16 out of 20.

Classmates say the two men appeared to be in good social standing at the time.

Nuno Morais, 48, now a researcher at the Gulbenkian Institute of Molecular Medicine in Lisbon, said he and his classmates were shaken by the news of Loureiro’s murder and were “scrambling their brains” to find any sign that something was wrong.

“As we know Cláudio and have a good relationship with him, we cannot find any other explanation other than a serious mental health problem made worse by resentment at not being able to achieve the academic career he dreamed of,” he said.

Shortly after graduation in Lisbon, Valente enrolled at Brown University as a promising young physics doctoral student, but dropped out a few months later in early 2001 and returned to Portugal to work as a programmer at an internet provider.

Loureiro studied at Imperial College London and then Princeton University, then worked at the Culham Center for Fusion Energy in the United Kingdom. He joined MIT in 2016 as a professor of nuclear science and engineering, eventually becoming director of the Plasma Science and Fusion Center at the institute.

Classmates of Valente and Loureiro said they suspected the academy’s highly competitive atmosphere may have taken a toll on their mental health.

“I don’t recall any specific situations during our graduate studies that directly involved Nuno and Cláudio, but the culture at these schools remains the same—an extremely competitive environment where struggling students are looked down upon and made to feel like they can only succeed if they are the best of the best,” Morais said.

According to his colleagues, Valente was devastated by his inability to complete his doctorate.

Morais said: “The only connection I could make to Cláudio’s trajectory and events was his disappointment with his experience at Brown. Those of us who work in academia dream of earning a doctorate at a major American university. Cláudio aspired to have a brilliant academic career comparable to Nuno’s, and this dream was prematurely dashed and disappointing.” .

She said her current job involves mentoring and supporting students, which made her aware of how normalized emotional distress and high pressure have become in the academic world. Over the years, higher education institutions like MIT and Caltech have taken steps to alleviate student pressure due to high suicide rates, he said. He said Portugal was lagging behind in this regard.

“Portuguese schools now have therapist offices to help students, but there is a huge lag in tackling bullying and harassment within institutions. The dominant culture is still one in which senior figures behave in ways that harm mental health and continue to be tolerated. Tragedies like this should make us think very carefully,” Morais said.

A spokesman for Técnico said the school was not aware of any connection between the shootings and the time Valente and Loureiro spent at the university.

“From what we read in the media they appeared to have a normal, professional relationship. We cannot see how something that happened 30 years ago could be linked to what is happening now, but the school will meet to think and discuss,” they said.

Valente returned to the United States in 2017 through the diversity lottery immigrant visa program and received a green card. He lived in Miami.

On Friday morning, after Valente was found dead at a storage facility in Salem, New Hampshire, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced that she was pausing the visa plan at Trump’s direction to “ensure that no more Americans are harmed by this disastrous program.”

In his statement on his social media account, he wrote, “This disgusting person should never have been allowed to enter our country.”

Such comments, and the Trump administration’s move to further narrow pathways to legal immigration by using crime as an excuse, have sparked outrage among Valente and Loureiro’s colleagues.

Morais said:[This puts] The focus of the problem is in the wrong place. “Access to guns and the hyper-competitive culture of some universities are closer to the root causes of these shootings than immigration.”