Brown University President Offers Baffling Excuse on Missing Cameras — and No One’s Buying It

In the aftermath of the horrific Saturday shootings on Brown University’s campus, one figure managed to stand out for all the wrong reasons: university president Christina Paxson. Her performance throughout the ordeal has been a case study in how elite academic leadership collapses under pressure—particularly when DEI-driven optics overshadow basic competence.

Thursday night’s briefing, where law enforcement announced that 48-year-old former student Claudio Neves-Valente killed himself in a New Hampshire storage unit roughly 80 miles from Providence, offered yet another glimpse of Paxson’s inability to provide clarity or leadership. For the students, parents, and faculty who must continue dealing with her administration, the event was a grim reminder that the ideological culture running America’s elite campuses often leaves no adults in the room when it matters most.

Authorities had spent several days fumbling through their investigation before finally connecting the shootings at Brown with the murder of an MIT professor two days later. That link led them to Neves-Valente, who was reportedly fired from a monitor position at the same Portuguese institution where slain MIT professor Nuno Loureiro once studied. Paxson herself acknowledged that Neves-Valente had previously enrolled as a graduate student at Brown during the same year he was dismissed from his job in Portugal.

The briefing began with officials congratulating one another for tracking down the suspect—though they were unable to apprehend him alive. Then came the press questions, which exposed just how unprepared Paxson was to defend her own institution’s security failures.

Reporters immediately zeroed in on the stunning lack of cameras inside the building where the shooting occurred.

One journalist asked directly:
“There were no cameras in this building. And law enforcement, some of them are standing up behind you, have said if Brown had cameras in that part of the building, we would have gotten this guy.”

Paxson’s response only deepened the confusion.
“Well, I don’t think we have said the locations of cameras at Brown,” she insisted, before the reporter reminded her that the footage which helped break the case came from a rental car agency.

Paxson then offered this:
“We have 1,200 cameras at Brown–”

To which the reporter immediately countered:
“But not in that building.”

Paxson doubled down:
“We have some in that building, it’s a large complex, and I think what you would see is the video evidence in this case … has been incredibly helpful. The moving of the person around the neighborhood, those video images, they helped crack this case.”

But it wasn’t Brown’s cameras that helped. It was the neighbors’ — a point the reporter emphasized:
“You did not have cameras in that building. Just say it so we can get this over.”

Her reply?
“I think we need to look back, we’ll look at everything that was done. But I do not think a lack of cameras in that building had anything to do with what happened there.”

The contradictions are impossible to ignore. Paxson praises the usefulness of video evidence, yet claims the absence of cameras inside the crime scene had no effect. That narrative becomes even more convenient when viewed alongside reports suggesting that Brown scaled back certain camera usage to appease pro-Palestinian activists who opposed being recorded during demonstrations:

Of course, one doesn’t need a conspiracy theory to explain the chaos—simple incompetence suffices. And Paxson delivered multiple examples.

Here she is explaining that a system Brown’s own website described as usable during an active shooter situation was, in fact, not something they “would ever use in the case of an active shooter”:

And here she is admitting that, six hours after the tragedy, she still couldn’t explain what students had been doing in the classroom where they were killed:

(For clarity: They were studying for an economics final.)

At a time when President Donald J. Trump is pushing for stronger campus accountability and a return to academic excellence rooted in discipline and responsibility, Brown University’s handling of this tragedy reflects the opposite—bureaucracy, deflection, and ideological paralysis.

Whether anyone in Paxson’s orbit will face consequences is another matter. But wealthy donors have already shown their ability to force change at elite universities, particularly Ivy League institutions that depend heavily on alumni support. If Brown’s alumni want real leadership, withholding donations may be the only language this administration understands.