Tag: universities

Brown University mass shooting and MIT assassination may be connected, police confirm

The Brown University mass shooting which killed two students may be connected to the assassination of an MIT professor two days later, police have said.

An unidentified gunman opened fire on the Brown campus in Providence, Rhode Island on Saturday, and investigators failed to track the attacker down. 

Two days later, an unknown assailant fatally shot Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor Nuno Loureiro inside his Boston home around 50 miles away. 

FBI agent Ted Docks said Tuesday ‘there seems to be no connection’ between the two shootings, but investigators told WPRI Thursday that there may be a link. 

The outlet did not give further information about the connection, but said it marks ‘a new break in the case’ which has baffled investigators for days. 

Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, of Virginia, and Ella Cook, of Alabama, were fatally gunned down during the mass shooting at Brown on Saturday. 

They were in a study session held at the Ivy League’s School of Engineering Barus and Holley Building when a gunman burst in shortly after 4pm and opened fire. 

The gunman fired 40 rounds, killing the two students and wounding 12 more. 

FBI agents have released several photographs and videos of two ‘persons of interest’, but they are yet to name a suspect in the tragedy. 

A different ‘person of interest’ was detained at the Hampton Inn hotel in Coventry the day after the shooting, but they were later released without charge. 

Two days after the Brown shooting, at around 8.30pm Monday evening, married father-of-three Loureiro was shot dead in his home in Brookline, Boston. 

Loureiro’s neighbor and friend, Louise Cohen, said she discovered his body after hearing shots disturb the peace of their beautiful area on Gibbs Street. 

Cohen said she was lighting a menorah candle when she heard gunshots fired. She rushed to the hallway of their building and found Loureiro lying on his back. 

The professor’s heartbroken wife was also in the entry along with another neighbor, and they scrambled to dial 911. Loureiro was taken to hospital but died the next day.

Loureiro’s neighbors remembered him as a kind-hearted, ‘wonderful man’, while students flocked to the candle-lit vigil in his memory.

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Anti-Turning Point USA professor used class time to plot disruption: report

A professor who disrupted a Turning Point USA meeting allegedly used class time to organize her protest, The College Fix has learned.

The viral video shows a professor, identified by witnesses as Nicole Rousseau, entering the mid-November kickoff meeting of a new TPUSA club at Purdue University Northwest. She begins to complain about “fascism” and says the center-right group wants to control what people are allowed to say.

“You have a situation here where you want to go into classrooms and you want to tell faculty that they’re not allowed to speak the truth about the history of this country,” Rousseau said.

However, this was no spontaneous protest by a single professor.

“She was strategizing on how to interrupt our group…in her class time,” Vice President Hailey Vanderhye told The Fix during an in-person interview. The group learned of this via a student in Rousseau’s class. The sociology professor also brought a group of students with her to protest the organizational meeting.

The professor also reportedly called Turning Point USA a terrorist group. She wanted to “take down Turning Point and remove us from campus,” President Abby Najacht told The Fix during an on-campus interview Dec. 10.

Rousseau initially ignored the group’s advisor who tried to deescalate the situation when she first entered. Only after the advisor brought in an administrator did she leave.

The sociology professor did not respond to two emails and a voicemail in the past week that asked for comment on the situation. The Fix also asked her to address allegations she used class time to disrupt the meeting. 

Her background is in critical race theory, “historical womanist theory,” and “feminist theory,” according to her curriculum vitae.

She has a history of using her faculty position to try to shut down the free speech rights of other groups. “Served as faculty advisor of student-led protest,” the professor lists on her curriculum vitae. “George Mason University student sit-in protesting anti-gay rhetoric in campus newspaper.”

She has also previously lectured to the board of directors for Planned Parenthood in Northeast Ohio. 

Listed media rep Kale Wilk did not respond to an emailed request for comment Friday on what the school has done to address the situation, if the university encourages or discourages professors from using class time to organize disruptions of student organizations, and for any additional context. The Fix followed up with an email and voicemail on Monday, but Wilk has yet to respond.

The school previously criticized the disruption.

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Rhode Island Democrat AG SNAPS at Reporter When Asked Why Pro-Palestine Activist’s Brown University Profiles Were Scrubbed — Brown University Releases Statement

As the investigation into a shocking mass shooting at Brown University drags into its fourth day with no suspect in custody, Rhode Island’s Democrat Attorney General Peter Neronha snapped at a reporter after being confronted with mounting questions, including why Brown University scrubbed its website of a pro-Palestine activist’s profile.

As The Gateway Pundit previously reported, one of the victims of the attack was 19-year-old Brown University sophomore Ella Cooke, a devout Christian from Alabama and the Vice President of Brown’s Republican Club.

Fox News host Jesse Watters raised disturbing questions that many Americans are now asking:

“The family of Ella Cooke, the Alabama young woman who was a sophomore, has been told that she was the target of what happened at Brown. I have no idea whether that’s true. But if police are telling students they are safe and don’t need to shelter in place — while they don’t have a suspect in custody — that suggests this was a targeted attack.”

The second Brown University shooting victim has been identified as 18-year-old Uzbekistan immigrant Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov.

Watters also noted reports that the shooter may have screamed “Allahu Akbar” before opening fire, though police have refused to confirm the details.

“A guy walks into an Ivy League building, fires off 40 rounds, murders two people, walks out — and three days later, they have no idea who he is. They won’t even say if it was a man or a woman. Police first claimed they had a white Army veteran detained… then admitted, ‘Oops, wrong guy.’”

As police stonewalled the public, internet sleuths noticed something else: Brown University wiped its website of profiles linked to a self-described “Free Palestine” and LGBTQ activist.

(NOTE: The Gateway Pundit is not alleging or asserting that the individual is the shooter at Brown University. No individual mentioned in this report has been charged in connection with the crime unless explicitly stated by law enforcement. As always, all individuals are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.)

When reporters asked Rhode Island AG Peter Neronha about the sudden removal of the profiles, he became visibly defensive.

Neronha insisted that if the activist’s name were relevant, law enforcement would be “out looking for that person,” and warned the public against “reading into things.”

He concluded by demanding that the public focus instead on helping police identify the shooter, despite the fact that authorities have released little actionable information.

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Ed Department: Nearly 2,000 Minnesota ‘Ghost Students’ Fraudulently Received $12.5 Million

In Minnesota, home to the largest population of Somali immigrants in the U.S. and the site of numerous fraud investigations, fraudsters received $12.5 million in student loan and education grant money, according to a letter Education Secretary Linda McMahon sent to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

The letter calls on Walz to resign, and states that a new fraud prevention system at the department has found over $1 billion in “attempted financial aid theft,” including by international fraud rings and artificial intelligence (AI) bots.

“[Y]our careless lack of oversight and abuse of the welfare system has attracted fraudsters from around the world, especially from Somalia, to establish a beachhead of criminality in our country,” McMahon wrote. “As President Trump put it, you have turned Minnesota into a ‘fraudulent hub of money laundering activity.’”

“At the beginning of this year, the U.S. Department of Education became aware that fraudulent college applicants, especially concentrated in Minnesota, were gaming the federal postsecondary education system to collect money that was intended for young Americans to help them afford college,” she said.

McMahon referred to the fraudsters as “‘ghost students’ because they were not ID-verified and often did not live in the United States, or they simply did not exist,” and noted that, “[i]n Minnesota, 1,834 ghost students were found to have received 12.5 million in taxpayer-funded grants and loans.”

They “collected checks from the federal government, shared a small portion of the money with the college, and pocketed the rest–without attending the college at all,” according to the letter.

The letter comes after Somalis in Minnesota, in particular, have been exposed as having massively defrauded American taxpayers. They have even reportedly funded terrorists back in their country.

The news surrounding Somali fraud includes allegations of multiple scams, including claims that an autism “provider” enrolled Somali children who did not have an autism diagnosis in a welfare fraud scheme.

The outrage, among many other cultural problems with Somalis, has resulted in President Donald Trump intending to cancel some Somalis’ temporary protected status.

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Oxford University student, 20, is charged with stirring up racial hatred after allegedly promoting an antisemitic chant at pro-Palestine demonstration

An Oxford University student caught on camera allegedly making antisemitic chants at a pro-Palestine demonstration has been charged with a public order offence.

The Metropolitan Police said Samuel Williams, 20, was charged with stirring up racial hatred at a Palestine Coalition demo in Whitehall, central London, on Saturday, October 11.

He was charged today and will appear before Westminster Magistrates’ Court in the new year.

Williams was identified by the Daily Mail after footage emerged of a man allegedly chanting an antisemitic chant at the pro-Palestine protest.

Williams was arrested at a property in Oxfordshire on suspicion of inciting racial hatred following an investigation launched by Scotland Yard detectives.

The philosophy, politics and economics student at Balliol College was also suspended by Oxford University.

Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson said there had been an ‘unacceptable increase in anti-Semitism’ at universities and added that many Jewish students did not feel safe on campus.

She called on universities to strengthen protections for Jewish students and said the Government was funding training to help staff and students ‘tackle this poison of antisemitism’.

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MIT professor shot at his Massachusetts home dies

A Massachusetts university professor who was shot at his home has died, campus officials say.

Nuno F Gomes Loureiro, 47, a nuclear science and engineering professor from Portugal, was shot “multiple times” on Monday and died on Tuesday morning in hospital, according to Brookline police and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) officials.

Police said officers responded to a call for gunshots at an apartment at about 8:30pm local time. Loureiro was taken by ambulance to a Boston hospital, where he died on Tuesday morning.

No one is in custody and police are treating the incident as “an active and ongoing homicide investigation”, the Norfolk County District Attorney’s Office said.

CBS News, the BBC’s US media partner, reported that a neighbour said he heard “three loud bangs” Monday evening and thought somebody in the apartment building was kicking in a door.

Long-time resident Anne Greenwald told CBS that the professor had a young family and went to school nearby.

Loureiro majored in Physics at Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon in 2000 and obtained a Phd in physics at Imperial College London in 2005, according to his faculty web page.

Loureiro was known for his research on the dynamics of plasma – the part of blood that carries platelets, red blood cells and white blood cells around the body. He was named director of MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center in May.

He also studied how to harness clean “fusion power” to combat climate change, CBS said.

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Police Release New Images and Video of ‘Person of Interest’ in Deadly Brown University Shooting

The FBI released new images of the ‘person of interest’ in the deadly Brown University shooting.

A total of two people were killed and nine were injured in Saturday’s mass shooting at Brown University.

Law enforcement took a ‘person of interest’ into custody overnight on Saturday but released him late Sunday.

A manhunt is underway for the ‘armed and dangerous’ Brown University shooter.

The FBI released three new videos of a person of interest and offered a $50,000 reward leading to the ID and arrest of the individual.

“The FBI is offering a reward of up to $50,000 for information leading to the identification, arrest, and conviction of the individual,” FBI Director Kash Patel said.

“Anyone with information please contact the FBI at 1-800-CALL-FBI (225-5324) or the Providence Police Department at 401-272-3121,” Patel said.

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Outrageous: Drexel Medical School Enshrines CRT and ‘Antiracism’ As Part of Doctors Duty

In the latest outrageous virtue signaling in academia, Campus Reform is reporting Drexel University’s College of Medicine is pushing an ‘Antiracism in Healthcare’ module for medical students that a conservative organization accuses of “prioritizing ideological indoctrination over scientific inquiry.”

Medicine was never meant to be a place for social experiments and virtue signaling.

According to Campus Reform, “The module, which appears on the college’s website, promises to teach students to ‘explain how structural, cultural, and individual racism have shaped our common history and have led to vast societal disparities in education, policing, wealth and healthcare, and to “commit to being antiracist in your attitudes and behaviors.’”

This seems to bear little relevance to actually practicing medicine, a field where any sort of politics or ideology should not play a role.

One section of this module even makes the outlandish claim that “structural racism accounts for health disparities.”

In other words, now people getting sick is also a result of racism according to Left-wing ideology.

“Perhaps the great majority of healthcare providers would deny that they are racist or let biases influence their patient care,” the module says.

“Yet there are great disparities in healthcare and health outcomes between racial groups. Certainly, structural racism accounts for many of these disparities.”

Another section of this module is focused on the canon of woke ideology, CRT, or critical race theory.

According to this absurd theory, race is a social construct and that racism is not merely the product of individual bias or prejudice but has become structural.”

“Do No Harm, a conservative nonprofit organization that advocates for removing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) from medicine, criticized the Drexel module for valuing an identity-based ideology over science.”

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Waste of the Day: Senators Earmarked Cash for Their Former Schools

Topline: Nearly every university relies on donations from its former students, but those with alumni in the Senate can solicit money straight from taxpayers’ wallets.

Twenty-four U.S. senators requested earmarks in the 2026 federal budget for the colleges they attended as students, totaling $614 million, according to Open the Books’ audit of congressional disclosures.

Some of the earmarks have been removed during congressional debate, but others will make their way into the final appropriations bill Congress must pass before Jan. 31 to avoid another government shutdown.

Key facts: The 125 earmarks are spread across 21 states.

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) stands out with $165 million in requests, far more than any other senator. McConnell once supported a complete ban on earmarks but has recently become one of the GOP’s most pork-hungry senators, with 60 requests filed this year.

McConnell asked for four earmarks worth $100 million for the University of Louisville, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in 1964, and three earmarks worth $65 million for the University of Kentucky, where he graduated law school. Some of the money would be used to build “state-of-the art” research facilities and buy “high-end” lab equipment.

Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS) requested the second most money with $60 million for the University of Kansas and its hospital.

Sen. Jim Justice (R-WV) asked for nine separate earmarks totaling $57.5 million for Marshall University, where he earned his bachelor’s degree and Master of Business Administration.

Justice, once the richest man in West Virginia according to Forbes, previously donated $5 million of his own money to Marshall University. Today he has a net worth of “less than zero,” per Forbes, because of crippling debt and liabilities.

He has spent the last few years funneling government funds to Marshall University instead of using his personal wealth. As governor of West Virginia, he gave the school $45 million for a cybersecurity program and $14 million for a baseball stadium.

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Police Release Person of Interest After Questioning in Brown University Shooting

Law enforcement will be releasing the person of interest in the Brown University shooting.

The manhunt for the Brown University shooter is still underway.

Two people are dead and nine are injured after a gunman opened fire at Brown University on Saturday.

Overnight Saturday and into Sunday morning, police took Benjamin Erickson into custody as a person of interest to question him.

Erickson, a Wisconsin native, was not enrolled as a student at Brown.

Later Sunday, Providence Mayor Brett Smiley announced law enforcement would be releasing Erickson from custody.

Officials do not have enough evidence to prosecute Erickson.

Police Chief Oscar Perez said the FBI “followed through with” a tip and located a person of interest.

Law enforcement looked into Erickson’s alleged history of mental health issues.

“We will be releasing the person of interest who had been detained earlier today,” said Providence Mayor Brett Smiley.

“We know that this is likely to cause fresh anxiety for our community. And we want to reiterate what we said earlier, which remains true… we have not received any credible or specific threats to the Providence community,” he added.

“And so the status of safety in our community remains unchanged. And we believe that you remain safe in our community,” he said.

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