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Brown University’s board of trustees, which features a top bank CEO, billionaires, hedge fund and banking leaders, authors, professors, actresses and scientists, has remained silent after the campus murders that took place earlier this month.
While the primary duty of the board is to uphold the fiduciary duty of the Ivy League university and does not oversee day-to-day operations, the group is the highest governing body of the school, is responsible for appointing and evaluating the president of the college and approves strategic long-term strategy and planning for the top college.
The board conducts regular reviews of the university president, and has authority over the president’s employment.
Despite its role as Brown University’s highest governing authority with direct power over presidential oversight and long-term strategy, the board of trustees has declined to comment in the wake of the murders that exposed serious lapses in campus security. (Photo by David L. Ryan/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
Trustees include prominent Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan, who serves as the chancellor of the board, Goldman Sachs Chairman of Asset Management Division Rich Friedman, author and Stripe COO Claire Hughes Johnson, Global Head of Blackstone Multi-Asset Investing Joe Dowling, actress Margaret Munzer, former U.S. Rep. David Cicilline, Boston Legacy Football Club’s Ami Kuan Danoff, and other banking leaders and billionaires.
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Digital reached out to every trustee on the board, but did not receive any responses.
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 inability to apprehend the killer in the aftermath of the murders.
Earlier this month, a lone gunman, whom police identified as Portuguese national Claudio Neves-Valente, canvassed the campus prior to taking the lives of two Brown University students on Dec. 13. Investigators credit a homeless man who was living on campus with being a primary source in identifying and ultimately locating the alleged shooter.
Images of Claudio Manuel Neves-Valente displayed 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 a mass shooting that killed two students and wounded nine. (Andrea Margolis/ Digital)
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The homeless man, who is known by the pseudonym John, was living in the basement of Brown’s Barus and Holley engineering building. Police couldn’t identify him on their own, and asked social media to help find a person in proximity to the actual person of interest.
Questions remain as to why a homeless person was allowed to take shelter in the basement of the Ivy League school’s facility.
There was limited surveillance in the building where the mass shooting took place, and had the killer been apprehended, it may have saved the life of an MIT professor who authorities said was murdered in his home by Neves-Valente days later.
Brown University victims Ella Cook and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, alongside MIT professor Nuno Loureiro, who was killed. (Instagram/elinacoutlakis/GoFundMe/Jake Belcher for MIT)
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A custodian at the university told the Boston Globe he saw the alleged gunman nearly a dozen times prior to the attack, hiding in bathrooms to avoid being seen and even reported the unusual activity to a campus security guard in November.
Authorities found Neves-Valente dead by suicide in a storage shed in Salem, New Hampshire on Thursday night.
In her statement following the discovery, Paxson condemned “gun violence,” targeted “harmful doxxing activity” and noted “no indication of any concerns pertaining to conduct or any public safety interactions” by Neves-Valente while he was a student at Brown for a short time more than 20 years ago.
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Interior view of Barus and Holley Room 166 on the campus of Brown University in Providence, R.I. On Saturday, Dec. 13, around 4p.m., a masked man with a gun entered a review session in Barus & Holley Room 166 for ECON 0110: “Principles of Economics,” shouted something indiscernible and opened fire. (Kenna Lee/The Brown Daily Herald)
“In the aftermath of the shooting, we have seen harmful doxxing activity directed toward several students, faculty and staff, and multiple offices have been committed to providing support,” Paxson said.
“We also have worked aggressively to combat disinformation in online media and activity that has gone as far as to threaten individuals in our community,” the university president added.
When asked about whether the lack of cameras on campus was a hindering factor in catching the mass shooter, she said, “I do not think a lack of cameras in that building had anything to do with what happened there.”
Paxson, whose annual salary surpassed $3 million in 2023, and the university have been heavily criticized for negligence in both protecting the campus and finding Neves-Valente, who went on to take another life in Massachusetts after murdering two Ivy League students, authorities said.
Brown University President Christina H. Paxson speaks during a news conference after a mass shooting prompted a lockdown on campus on Dec. 13, 2025. (Getty)
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Sources told that the university is preparing to face lawsuits resulting from the shooting, and confirmed Monday morning they have retained former U.S. attorney Zachary Cunha to represent the Ivy League school.
Digital reached out to Brown University to see if the board was planning on issuing any statement regarding the shooting, security measures or any plans for the future of Brown, but did not receive a response.
Preston Mizell is a writer with . Story tips can be sent to [email protected] and on X @MizellPreston
