On Feb. 6, 2021, Kevin Jiang, a 26-year-old Yale graduate student and former Army National Guardsman, spent the day with Zion Perry, his fiancée, who was also a graduate student there. The couple went hiking and ice fishing, followed by dinner at her home in the affluent East Rock section of New Haven. Police say that at around 8:30 p.m. Jiang left her apartment and headed off in his Prius to his house, where he lived with his mother.
Kevin Jiang was a 26-year-old Yale graduate student, an Army veteran, and, his friends say, a man of faith who volunteered with the homeless.
Kevin Jiang/Instagram
He barely made it two blocks before his car was struck from behind by a dark SUV in what appeared to be a minor fender bender. Police believe he got out of his car, likely to check on how the other driver was and exchange information. Instead, the other motorist shot Jiang eight times — with several bullets fired so close to his head that the exploding gunpowder left burn marks on his face.
David Zaweski, the lead homicide detective in Jiang’s murder, talked with “48 Hours” correspondent Anne-Marie Green for “The Ivy League Murder.” An encore of the broadcast is streaming on Paramount+.
Zaweski said that one witness told investigators she heard the minor fender bender, looked out a window, heard gunshots and saw muzzle flashes from a weapon. And another witness added that she not only heard the gunshots, but she saw the shooter — dressed all in black — standing over his fallen victim, continuing to fire bullets into him after he was down. Detectives would later recover a chilling home surveillance video that virtually captured Kevin’s final moments alive, confirming the witness’ accounts.
But deepening the mystery was the fact that the eight spent shell casings lying near Jiang were .45 caliber bullets — and they were similar to .45 caliber shell casings found at the scene of four recent shootings in the area.
According to police, a gunman had fired .45 caliber bullets into four homes over the last several months. In those cases, no one had been hurt. Investigators interviewed the homeowners but were unable to find any connection between them.
At first glance, Jiang’s murder had all the earmarks of a violent case of road rage. But Zaweski and his colleague Steven Cunningham quickly began to wonder if there was more.
“It seems a little bit more personal,” Zaweski told Green. “When you have someone laying on the ground and not moving, what would cause someone to continue firing?”
Cunningham questioned the car accident. “Was it deliberate to get him out of the vehicle? Possibly something that was planned?” he said.
“And if he was specifically targeted,” Zaweski continued, “what could have happened in his life to drive someone to do this?
It was a logical investigative avenue to pursue, but after breaking the tragic news to Jiang’s mother and his fiancée, investigators say the portrait that emerged of Kevin was that of a gifted young man who couldn’t have had an enemy in the world. He was living with, and taking care of, his mother, whom he brought from Seattle to live with him. He volunteered to work with the homeless, was deeply religious, and was a former lieutenant in the U.S. Army National Guard. Just a week earlier he had proposed to Perry, which she posted on Facebook, virtually on the anniversary of their meeting at a Christian retreat.
Kevin Jiang and Zion Perry
Facebook
Pastor Gregory Hendrickson summed up the young newly engaged couple for Green. “They clearly shared a lot in common,” he began. “They both loved nature. Zion was a scientist studying molecular biophysics and biochemistry… he was in the School of the Environment. They’re both brilliant and hardworking students,” he said, “and yet they didn’t feel like their accomplishments were what defined them at the deepest level.”
Zaweski and Cunningham knew they faced a daunting investigation. Jiang’s murder may just have been another random shooting by the mysterious .45 caliber gunman. Whoever the shooter was, he was still on the loose.
“The suspect was out there,” Zaweski said. “He wasn’t identified. We didn’t know where he went … and we didn’t know what he would be doing next.”
With few leads to pursue and a vague image of a dark SUV from surveillance footage at the scene, they knew they likely would need a break. And they got one the following day when they received an urgent call from Sgt. Jeffrey Mills of the nearby North Haven police. He provided them with startling information about two different 911 calls.
The first one occurred about a half hour after Jiang’s murder. A motorist had gotten stuck on a desolate snow-covered railroad track outside a scrap metal yard he had accidentally driven into, he said, while looking for a nearby highway entrance. The motorist, Qinxuan Pan, was from Malden, Massachusetts. His record was clean, and he was calm with an excuse that Mills had heard before from others who got lost near that scrap yard. So, he helped Pan get a tow and a nearby hotel room. At the time, Mills was unaware that there had been a murder in New Haven.
But about 15 hours later, at 11 a.m. on Feb. 7, Mills responded to another 911 call at an Arby’s, where employees had found a bag containing a gun and box of .45 caliber bullets. The Arby’s was right next door to the Best Western hotel where Pan had been taken. And by then he knew Kevin Jiang had been murdered, by someone driving a dark SUV similar to Pan’s. That’s when he reached out to New Haven homicide.
It turned out Pan had checked into the hotel but never stayed there. And when Zaweski sent detectives to Malden, where Pan went to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and lived with his parents — no one was home.
Zaweski turned to his computer searching for Pan, hoping to find a connection to Jiang. “We’ll use Facebook as a tool to try and get a background on an individual, who they’re friends with,” Zaweski explained. But there seemed to be no connection with Jiang.
“And so, you’re going down the list of names,” Green says, “Nothing, nothing, nothing, and then you’re like, ‘whoa.’”
“There’s our connection,” Zaweski replies. That connection was Zion Perry, who was listed as a friend of Pan. She and Pan had met each other at a Christian group when Perry was an undergraduate at MIT. And although Perry was barely an acquaintance of Pan and hadn’t communicated with him since she left MIT and moved to New Haven to attend Yale, the homicide detectives felt they had more than a break. They had a potential suspect who was missing from his home. And a possible motive: an obsession with Perry.
“It did seem like there was a secret obsession of Pan’s going on behind the scenes that Kevin wasn’t aware of, and that Zion wasn’t aware of,” Zaweski said. After all, Jiang’s murder occurred just one week after Perry posted their engagement on Facebook, along with previous photos of them dating.
Qinxuan Pan
Qinxuan Pan/Facebook
Investigators believe Pan was also responsible for the four .45 caliber shootings, and that the shootings were part of a premeditated plan. They theorized that those shootings were done to mislead them when Jiang was eventually killed, to make them think his death had been just another random incident.
“He planned it, Cunningham said. “And he knew we’d be looking at these other things.”
“This wasn’t a random incident out there,” Zaweski added. “He was targeted.”
Now, their homicide investigation, and the massive manhunt for their brilliant, tech-savvy MIT fugitive took off. U.S. Marshals joined the case and learned that Pan’s family had access to millions of dollars in assets. Pan was missing, and they worried he might be trying to flee the country. The pressure was on.
“This became so high profile so fast,” U.S. Marshal Joe Galvan told “48 Hours.” “It was just heightened.”
The Marshals galvanized their vast resources to track down Pan. They noticed Pan’s parents had withdrawn large sums of cash, and that they had taken a long trip south with their son right after the murder. When the parents had been stopped in Georgia, they were in the car, but their son was gone. They said he’d simply gotten out of the car and walked away, and they didn’t know where he’d gone. Investigators were skeptical.
“They would go to the ends of the earth to help support and hide him,” said Matthew Duffy, a supervisor of the U.S. Marshals Fugitive Task Force in Connecticut. The Marshals focused in on the parents as their way to find Pan. They knew finding him would take patience as they utilized all their surveillance techniques to track the family.
Weeks went by, but eventually, their patience paid off. Pan’s mother finally made a mistake that would lead the Marshals straight to her son. She made a phone call from a hotel using a clerk’s phone. Investigators spoke to the clerk and were able to track that call, leading them to Pan’s location at a boarding house in Alabama.
“They went there with a small army,” Duffy said. “Around 20 guys … he just came out and said, ‘I’m who you’re looking for.’”
At the time of his arrest, Pan had on him approximately $20,000 in cash, multiple communication devices, and his father’s passport. He was charged with Jiang’s murder, accepted a plea deal, and was sentenced in April 2024 to serve 35 years in prison.
Pan’s parents were never charged with anything. “48 Hours” reached out to the Pans, but they did not respond to our request for comment.
Investigators believe that had Pan not gotten stuck on the train tracks on that fateful February night, Jiang’s murder may never have been solved.
“Could he have gotten away with murder?” Green asked Zaweski.
“He very well could have,” Zaweski replied. “If he had not gotten caught up on those tracks … it would’ve been very difficult.”
Though investigators, friends, and family were relieved that Pan had been caught and brought to justice, Jiang’s mother spoke at Pan’s sentencing to say she felt that 35 years was too short a sentence for the man who’d killed her only son.
Perry agreed. “I wanted to address Pan specifically,” she said at the sentencing. “Although your sentence is far less than you deserve … there is also mercy. May God have mercy on you. And may he have mercy on all of us.”
Even four years after Jiang’s death, friends wonder what Kevin, a man of deep faith, might have thought about his killer.
“Do you think Kevin would’ve forgiven Pan?” Green asked Jamila Ayeh and Nasya Hubbard, who served with Jiang in the military.
“Yes, I do,” said Hubbard. Added Ayeh, “Without a doubt.”
A newly engaged Yale graduate student is gunned down by an unknown attacker after a fender bender. Was it extreme road rage or was he targeted? “48 Hours” correspondent Anne-Marie Green reports.
It was a cold night in New Haven, Connecticut, in February 2021 when lead detective David Zaweski and his colleague Steven Cunningham arrived at the crime scene.
Det. David Zaweski: The patrol officers had already been out there canvassing the area. They were knocking on doors looking for anyone that might’ve seen anything or heard anything.
Det. David Zaweski: The crime scene detectives were starting to locate all the, uh, shell casings.
Kevin Jiang, 26, was a graduate student at Yale University’s School of the Environment.
Det. David Zaweski: His body was still on scene … covered in a white sheet.
Anne-Marie Green: When you saw the body … what did you see?
Det. David Zaweski: What we could see were gunshot wounds to his upper body and to his head. And you could see stippling on the left side of his head.
Stippling is a burn pattern caused by gunpowder exploding from a weapon fired at close range.
About a hundred feet down the street —
Det. David Zaweski: There was a Prius just parked in the middle of the road with its hazards on.
They quickly discovered the Prius belonged to Kevin. Crime scene detectives noticed a peculiar bit of damage that suggested it had been hit from behind.
Det. David Zaweski: There was an impression that was left on the back bumper that looked like a license plate holder.
Anne-Marie Green: So, this is like a fender bender. It’s not a violent crash.
Det. David Zaweski: No. There’s not much damage.
One witness told detectives she heard the sound of an accident and went to the window to look.
Det. David Zaweski: When they look out, they see a Prius come to a stop and put its hazards on. They see a dark colored SUV pull up behind it and then reverse back toward the intersection. They see the operator of the Prius walk out and approach the SUV – most likely to see how they were, exchange insurance information. When the operator gets to the black SUV, they hear a round of gunshots and they see the muzzle flash from the gun from the driver’s side of the SUV.
Another witness heard the first round of gunshots and went to her window.
Det. David Zaweski: When she looks outside, she sees a subject, wearing all black, standing over another individual who’s laying on the ground. … she hears another round of gunshots and she can see the muzzle flash from the gun as he’s firing.
Det. David Zaweski: But she sees someone standing over another person, which means the victim is already down. And they’re still shooting.
Det. David Zaweski: Yes.
Anne-Marie Green: What did you think?
Det. David Zaweski: There’s a little bit more to it. It seems a little bit more personal. When you have someone laying on the ground and not moving, what would cause someone to continue firing at them?
The detectives were able to confirm these accounts when they got a look at video from a neighbor’s security system.
Det. David Zaweski: It was located on the inside of a window, facing outward.
Det. David Zaweski: We hear the collision between the two cars.
Det. David Zaweski: And that’s when you see Kevin’s Prius pull into frame … and the SUV pulls up behind him. And then reverses out of frame. You see Kevin exit his vehicle and then walk out of frame to approach the SUV.
Det. David Zaweski: You then hear two gunshots.
Det. David Zaweski: A scream.
Det. David Zaweski: And then six more gunshots.
Moments later, the video shows the SUV driving off into the night.
Anne-Marie Green: Can you make out any details when it comes to the SUV?
Det. David Zaweski: Unfortunately, not. … You could kind of get the idea of the potential make and model of it with the taillights, but you couldn’t discern any identifying features.
WERE RANDOM SHOOTINGS IN NEW HAVEN RELATED?
Investigators soon felt the dark SUV and the .45 caliber shells recovered at the scene pointed to a potential link to earlier shootings around the area that police had been investigating. Four times over a two-month span, someone fired shots into family homes – the fourth incident occurred just one hour before Kevin’s murder.
Det. David Zaweski: We had detectives in the bureau looking into each of the incidents to see if there’s any more of a connection to link them.
Paul Whyte (points out where the bullets came in): Two bullets came in from this window and ended up in this wall.
Paul and Nyree Whyte’s home was the target of the third shooting.
Paul Whyte: We had just finished dinner … I had a fire going.
Nyree, a schoolteacher, headed upstairs to take a shower. Paul — an educator with degrees from Yale, Harvard, and Columbia University — was sitting downstairs.
Paul Whyte: All of a sudden, something comes through this window. … then a second bullet came through – you heard the pop and the glass going everywhere with that one.
Paul shouted a warning to Nyree.
Paul Whyte: Get down. Someone’s shooting.
Nyree Whyte: And then I heard bang-pop again and I turn, and I literally saw the frame of the door just splinter.
Anne-Marie Green: And then she yells back at you.
Paul Whyte: Right, that someone’s shooting upstairs.
It was over in a matter of moments and no one was injured.
Anne-Marie Green: Do you feel lucky?
Paul Whyte: Yes.
Nyree Whyte: Absolutely.
Paul Whyte: Absolutely.
Detectives interviewed the Whytes and the occupants of the other houses.
Det. David Zaweski: There didn’t seem to be any connection between them.
And none of them, investigators say, had any connection to Kevin Jiang. But the shell casings from all the shootings would later tell a different story.
Det. David Zaweski: When the casings are sent to the lab, they all came back as matches to the casings found at the homicide.
The casings matched, but Kevin was the only person murdered, and detectives didn’t know why.
Det. David Zaweski: It could have been a road rage incident that turned a little too violent.
Or was Kevin targeted?
Det. Steven Cunningham: The car accident … was it deliberate … to get him out of the vehicle … Possibly something that was planned.
Det. David Zaweski: And if he was specifically targeted, what could have happened in his life to drive someone to do this?
SURVEILLANCE VIDEO CAPTURES KEVIN JIANG’S FINAL MOMENTS
It was late when detectives Zaweski and Cunningham left the crime scene on Feb. 6. They went to Kevin’s home looking to find a family member to notify about what had happened. His mother, Linda Liu, came to the door.
Anne-Marie Green: It’s got to be the hardest conversation.
Det. David Zaweski: It is. They always are.
Det. David Zaweski: You want to be direct and upfront and make it clear. As horrific as it is … for them. … So, we explained to her that he was shot and killed in the area of Lawrence and Nichols Street in New Haven.
Anne-Marie Green: Can she even comprehend that?
Det. David Zaweski: She’s absolutely devastated. She falls to the ground crying.
The detectives wanted to know everything about Kevin and why he may have been targeted that night. Liu began to tell them about her son.
Det. David Zaweski: It was just the two of them. And he was actually supporting her.
Kevin Jiang
Trinity Baptist Church/YouTube
Det. David Zaweski: She told us that he was a grad student at Yale University and was in the Army National Guard.
Kevin was deeply religious. He and his mother were part of the congregation at Trinity Baptist Church. Pastor Gregory Hendrickson knew them both and says that Liu, a divorced single parent, got Kevin through a tough childhood where he was often bullied.
Pastor Gregory Hendrickson: She was very committed to sort of seeing him come through and eventually he thrived on the other side of that … I think he had a sense of … honoring his mom by, as she had cared for him when he was a child … caring for her as she was getting older.
Kevin bought a house in 2019 and Hendrickson says he invited his mother to come live with him.
Pastor Gregory Hendrickson: She was living alone, she was living on the other side of the country, she didn’t have a lot of family support around her and … he … wanted … her to come and be with him during his studies at Yale.
Kevin Jiang had recently proposed to his girlfriend Zion Perry. “Oh, Kevin. Oh wow, oh yes, yes! Definitely! Wow, this is so pretty!” she replied.
Zion Perry/Facebook
Police also learned then that Jiang had recently gotten engaged to his girlfriend of a year, Zion Perry. She posted the proposal on Facebook. This was just one week before he was murdered.
Nasya Hubbard: He was so in love with Zion — you could tell — he didn’t even have to really say too much.
Nasya Hubbard served with Kevin in the Army National Guard.
Nasya Hubbard: I — oh my gosh. … I remember one time … he was on the phone with her and I was like, wow, like you could hear the genuineness and his love towards her. And I was like, wow. I hope I find someone like that.
Perry grew up in Pennsylvania, where she was an honors high school student. The couple met in January 2020 when Zion was still an undergraduate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT.
Pastor Gregory Hendrickson: He said, you know … I met her at Christian Retreat … she is very kind and we enjoy talking and um, just have great conversations together. … then she, uh, came to do her PhD at Yale.
Pastor Gregory Hendrickson: They clearly shared a lot of common — they both loved nature. … I mean, Zion was … a scientist … she is studying molecular biophysics and biochemistry. … So, you know, he was studying the — in the School of the Environment … they’re both brilliant and hardworking students … and yet … they didn’t feel like their accomplishments were, what, defined them at the deepest level.
Zaweski and Cunningham then interviewed an emotional Perry, and she told them she and Kevin had spent the day together.
Det. David Zaweski: They had gone ice fishing and had dinner at her house … and then he left her house around 8:30 that night.
Kevin Jiang and Zion Perry
Kevin Jiang/Facebook
Kevin didn’t get far. His Prius was struck by the dark SUV just two blocks from Perry’s house — close enough for Perry to hear the gunshots that followed.
Det. David Zaweski: She remembers hearing the gunshots, but she thought there was a good five or ten minutes after he’d left to when she heard the gunshots. So, she didn’t think he was anywhere near the area and didn’t think twice about him potentially being involved in any way.
Anne-Marie Green: Did she have any idea who would have done something like this?
Det. Steven Cunningham: At that point, no. Nothing that she told us that she — she could think of.
After speaking with Perry, detectives were no closer to figuring out why Kevin would be a target.
Det. Steven Cunningham: It seemed like just an innocent — innocent guy.
Anne-Marie Green: Did you think this was gonna be a tough case though?
Det. David Zaweski: That night —
Det. Steven Cunningham: Yes.
Det. David Zaweski: — we had a little bit, but there wasn’t a lot to go on.
But just 15 hours after the shooting, they got a huge break.
Det. David Zaweski: Little did we know that we’d get the phone call …
Det. Steven Cunningham: And it was like, wow.
THE MAN STUCK ON THE TRAIN TRACKS
News of Kevin Jiang’s murder spread among his loved ones and closest friends.
Nasya Hubbard: And I was at home and I actually got a phone call from another soldier … And she was saying, I know you guys were close … And then … like, her voice cracked. … and … she told me that he had passed away … And I was like not comprehending what was going on. … So I text him … And I was like, “answer your phone please.” And obviously, he never answered me.
Hubbard reached out to Capt. Jamila Ayeh. And if sharing the news about Jiang wasn’t tragic enough, someone posted the chilling video of his murder online, and his fellow soldiers now saw and heard Kevin’s final moments alive.
Nasya Hubbard: … to this day. … I can still hear him — hear him screaming … I was like, why did I listen to that?
Detectives Zaweski and Cunningham were back at their desks in headquarters, struggling for answers and leads to pursue.
Anne-Marie Green: Day two … you get a phone call.
Det. David Zaweski: Yes.
The call, from a sergeant at nearby North Haven Police Department, was urgent.
Det. David Zaweski: … two incidents had happened in North Haven the night before and then earlier that morning.
It began with a 911 call from a local scrap metal yard around 9 p.m. – less than a half hour after Kevin was killed.
911 CALL: I’m the, uh, security guard at … Sims Metal Management. … I just had somebody drive through my yard here … they didn’t know where they were going. … So I’ve been chasing them around the yard and, uh, they just pulled way in the back, off the property … it’s like a black minivan, SUV type of thing.
Sergeant Jeffrey Mills and Officer Marcus Artaiz responded and spotted that vehicle stuck on snow-covered railroad tracks, not far from the rear exit of the Sims scrap metal yard. They approached the driver.
SGT. JEFFREY MILLS: How you doing?
QINXUAN PAN: I’m stuck.
SGT. JEFFREY MILLS: Oh, yeah. What are you doing back here?
QINXUAN PAN: Stuck here.
SGT. JEFFREY MILLS: What are you doing back here, though?
QINXUAN PAN: I just got it here accidentally, and I got stuck. … Is there any way to get unstuck here?
SGT. JEFFREY MILLS: Uh, the only thing I can do is call you a tow truck.
QINXUAN PAN: OK, cool. Thanks.
A still from police bodycam video shows Qinxuan Pan talking with North Haven police after officers responded to a 911 call about a trespasser on private property.
North Haven Police Department
The motorist was 29-year-old Qinxuan Pan from Malden, Massachusetts.
SGT. JEFFREY MILLS: OK. Do you have your driver’s license on you?
QINXUAN PAN: Yes.
SGT. JEFFREY MILLS: Registration?
QINXUAN PAN: Yes. You can take this. OK.
His driver’s license and criminal background were clean. During the encounter, Mills noticed a yellow jacket on the passenger seat. He also saw a blue bag and a briefcase in the backseat, but not much else.
SGT. JEFFREY MILLS (bodycam): He took a wrong turn. … He got lost, and he thought the Jeep was probably chasing him, the security guy.
Because Sgt. Mills hadn’t heard about Kevin’s murder, he wasn’t particularly concerned.
OFFICER MARCUS ARTAIZ (bodycam): So, it’s nothing you think?
SGT. JEFFREY MILLS: Yeah, he’s —
OFFICER MARCUS ARTAIZ: He doesn’t look like he’s got any scrap on him or anything.
SGT. JEFFREY MILLS: No.
Sgt. Jeffrey Mills: I’ve been on the tracks I don’t know how many times with vehicles that were, you know, called into suspicious or whatever but kids go back there … people always come down there, um, according to the security guard … and they turn around in the front lot and they leave ’cause they missed the highway or something.
Anne-Marie Green: Yeah. Did he look nervous?
Sgt. Jeffrey Mills: He wasn’t nervous at all … He was perfectly calm.
QINXUAN PAN (bodycam): So what — what do you recommend I do? … I mean if I can get it off the track, I prefer to drive — drive it myself.
Sgt. Jeffrey Mills: He was just like, well sorry. I got stuck on the tracks can you help me get off?
OFFICER MARCUS ARTAIZ (bodycam): So how about you get a hotel for the night. We’ll have the tow truck drop you off at the hotel and you pay with credit card and you can arrange pick it up the car in the morning.
QINXUAN PAN: OK, let’s get the hotel then.
OFFICER MARCUS ARTAIZ (bodycam):: Yeah let’s do that.
SGT. JEFFREY MILLS: That’s probably the safest thing to do.
QINXUAN PAN: OK.
SGT. JEFFREY MILLS: OK.
Sgt. Jeffrey Mills: The tow truck came, uh, took a little work, but it got it off the tracks. … he gave, uh, Mr. Pan, uh, ride back to Best Western and I cleared the call like any other call.
But hours later, there was another call to 911.
Sgt. Jeffrey Mills: February 7th, around 11:00 a.m.
911 OPERATOR: Hello. Can I help you? … This is the police department.
CALLER: Uh hello, I work at Arby’s here in North Haven.
911 OPERATOR: Mm hmm.
ARBY’S EMPLOYEE: … we found a gun … and probably like, uh, 10 boxes of, um –
911 OPERATOR: Bullets?
ARBY’S EMPLOYEE: … bullets.
Sgt. Jeffrey Mills: An employee found a couple of bags on the grass at the north entrance here. When they brought ’em in …
Fifteen hours after the first 911 call, Sgt. Jeffrey Mills responded to another 911 call at an Arby’s, where employees had found a bag containing a gun and box of .45 caliber bullets. The Arby’s was next door to the Best Western hotel where Qinxuan Pan had been taken.
North Haven Police Department
OFFICER #1 (bodycam): There were three bags … this one, that one, and this.
OFFICER #2: Got it.
Sgt. Jeffrey Mills: I took a better look at the bags that it came in … And here’s a … blue retail bag with the Massachusetts logo on it and a small leather black briefcase. And it instantly hit me. These are the bags that were in Mr. Pan’s car the night before.
The Arby’s was right next door to the Best Western where Pan was dropped off. And by then, Mills had heard about the murder in New Haven.
Anne-Marie Green (with Mills outside Arby’s): What’s going through your brain?
Sgt. Jeffrey Mills: At that point … knowing … that New Haven had a homicide … they were looking for a dark-colored GMC SUV. Um, now, we’ve got a firearm. And then Officer Bianchi shows me a yellow jacket that was in it … And the suspect was wearing a yellow jacket.
SGT. JEFFREY MILLS (bodycam): So, he might be at Best Western right now.
OFFICER #1: Let’s go over there.
OFFICER #2: I’m gonna go over there.
Sgt. Jeffrey Mills: And when we got here I went in to the front desk and spoke with the attendant there and asked if Qinxuan Pan had checked in. Which they checked and said yes he did … I mean he hasn’t checked out yet.
That’s when Mills alerted New Haven homicide about Pan.
Anne-Marie Green: Do you immediately think there might be a connection with the homicide?
Det. David Zaweski: There’s a very good chance. … the vehicle matched. And … the items that were left behind at the Arby’s restaurant … it included a .45-caliber handgun and that matched the casings that were at the scene.
Zaweski immediately sent detectives to meet Mills at the Best Western.
Sgt. Jeffrey Mills: Uh so we got a key, went to room 276 … We knocked on the door, we entered the room. And the room was clean. … Nothing in it. It didn’t appear that anybody stayed in it for the night. … At first, we were like, oh, we lost him.
Qinxuan Pan, 29, was a graduate student at MIT studying artificial intelligence
Qinxuan Pan/Facebook
New Haven police sent investigators, including Detective Joe Galvan, to track down Pan. Galvan went to Malden, Massachusetts, where Pan lived with his parents and was a graduate student at MIT.
—
Det. Joe Galvan: … right outside of Boston …very affluent homes … There’s no one there. … so we knock on the door. … So … the day after the homicide, we were unsure if, uh, maybe the family, um, was on vacation. … out of state, out of the country.
But police were also worried.
Det. Joe Galvan: … were they — given the heinous act that occurred in New Haven the day before, were they potentially kidnapped by their own son? Were they victims of another … hor-horrible crime?
WAS AN OBSESSION A MOTIVE FOR MURDER?
With Qinxuan Pan and his parents missing from their home, Detective David Zaweski turned to his computer searching for Pan.
Det. David Zaweski: The first thing I wanna know is, who he is … and if there’s any connection between him and Kevin. … I see that he has a Facebook page.
Anne-Marie Green: What was his page like?
Detectives searched Qinxuan Pan’s Facebook account for possible clues.
Qinxuan Pan/Facebook
Det. David Zaweski: There was not much activity at all. His last, uh, post was back in 2016, and he had a few photos with some other students, but that was it.
Anne-Marie Green: Is that when you first found out that he’s an MIT grad student?
Det. David Zaweski: Yes that was the first time we got the connection between him and MIT.
Det. David Zaweski: So, I check his friends list to see if Kevin is in there.
Anne-Marie Green: Is he?
Det. David Zaweski: Kevin is not listed, but I do notice that Zion Perry is listed.
Zion Perry, Kevin’s fiancee, who also went to MIT.
Det. David Zaweski: Now we have a connection … I got in contact with her. … she explained that they had met at MIT back in, uh, 2019. And they were more associates than friends.
Anne-Marie Green: Nothing romantic?
Det. David Zaweski: No. … She said that they never dated, they never had any romantic relationship.
Det. David Zaweski: The last time she spoke with him was May of 2020 … he reached out to her through Facebook Messenger … to congratulate her on graduating. … He asked to FaceTime with her and she politely declined it.
Anne-Marie Green: She must have been wondering why you asking me so many questions about this guy. What’d you say to her?
Det. David Zaweski: She was, and that’s when I told her that he was a person of interest in this and she was completely shocked. … he was barely a part of her life. … and why he would’ve been involved with this in any way.
Anne-Marie Green: What did she have posted on her page?
Kevin Jiang and Zion Perry after Kevin’s proposal.
Zion Perry/Facebook
Det. David Zaweski: The last things that she had posted were the engagement between her and Kevin.
Anne-Marie Green: Are you starting to formulate a theory about the case that goes a little beyond possible road rage?
Det. David Zaweski: Yes … It did seem like there was a secret obsession of Pan’s going on behind the scenes that Kevin wasn’t aware of and that Zion wasn’t aware of.
The next day, Zion Perry joined Kevin’s mother, Linda Lui, and father, Mingchen Jiang, and nearly 700 people on a virtual vigil for Kevin. Perry addressed the mourners.
ZION PERRY: One day, I — I will get to see … Kevin again, yeah, in heaven and then everything is made right … I thank Miss Liu and Mr. Jiang for raising such a fine young man and for, yeah, bringing him into the world.
LINDA LIU: He gave me a lot of joy. He’s very thoughtful, warm boy taking care of me. And, uh, I miss him.
MINGCHEN JIANG: He’s a nice boy. Everybody likes him. (CRYING) Thank you. … Thank you, you all.
That week, Pastor Hendrickson eulogized Kevin at his funeral.
Pastor Gregory Hendrickson:We come to you today, remembering Kevin, grateful for his life, grieving over his loss.
Perry read a poem Kevin wrote to her. It began –
Zion Perry: “If this world falls apart, it will be all right, because we have each other’s hearts.”
A medical officer also trained to operate tanks, Kevin was buried with full military honors, just two days before his 27th birthday, on Valentine’s Day.
Meanwhile, Galvan, a member of the U.S. Marshals Fugitive Task Force in Connecticut — along with supervisor Matthew Duffy and Deputy Marshal Kevin Perreault — were utilizing their vast resources to urgently gather intelligence on Pan.
Supervisory Marshal Matthew Duffy: MIT graduate … not socially active … degree in computer science.
Lawyer William Gerace.
William Gerace: … grad student … in artificial intelligence.
Anne-Marie Green: Genius?
William Gerace: Genius. … socially not a genius.
The Marshals discovered Pan had three active phones, and they noticed that in the months before Kevin was killed, Pan was using one of those phones to contact car dealerships.
Det. Joe Galvan: He would tell them all the same thing. … um, said he was going for a test drive. I believe he said he was going on a camping trip.
Investigators were able to match the date of Pan’s test drives with each of the .45 caliber shootings in New Haven, including Kevin’s murder. It was all part of a plan, investigators say. They believe that Pan likely fired shots into those homes to ultimately mislead them, hoping that they would think Kevin’s murder was just another random shooting.
Det. Steve Cunningham: … he planned it … and he knew we’d be looking at these other things.
Det. David Zaweski: Yeah he did his best to … to mislead us.
Det. David Zaweski: Now we knew that, yes, this wasn’t a random incident out there … That he was targeted.
They also discovered that not long after Kevin’s murder, Pan called his parents, and they made a cash withdrawl of about $1,000.
William Gerace: They had tremendous assets somehow from Shanghai.
Deputy Marshal Kevin Perreault: Access to large sums of money … several million dollars.
The Marshals zeroed in on Pan’s parents and picked up a ping on their phone at a North Carolina gas station.
Det. Joe Galvan: Our task force … found it on — on the … on the ground.
The cellphone was crushed.
Supervisory Marshal Matthew Duffy: Like a car ran over it.
Three days later, investigators caught up with Pan’s parents driving near Atlanta, Georgia.
Supervisory Marshal Matthew Duffy: Georgia state police pulled them over.
Anne-Marie Green: He’s not in the vehicle.
Supervisory Marshal Matthew Duffy: Nope.
Police told them they suspected their son had killed someone.
Anne-Marie Green: Were they shocked?
Supervisory Marshal Matthew Duffy: No.
Anne-Marie Green: They weren’t shocked that their son was being investigated in connection with the cold-blooded murder.
Deputy Marshal Kevin Perreault: They may have been, but they didn’t — they didn’t lead on to us at all. They didn’t lead on to us at all.
Det. Joe Galvan: The father said our son called, said he was in Connecticut and needed help. He asked us to bring cash. Then once we picked him up in Connecticut,he took the wheel. … they take this very long drive down south …
Pan’s father didn’t say why his son was heading that direction.
Det. Joe Galvan: And he says he is quiet, acting weird. Doesn’t really say what’s going on. … they make it down to Georgia and … he pulls over … and he gets out of the car and walks away. … he said, no words to them, just walked away from the car. … That was their story
Pan’s parents agreed to be photographed. Pan’s mother declined to answer any questons without an attorney, but she later volunteered that her son walked away from her and his father and likely killed himself. The Marshals were skeptical.
Supervisory Marshal Matthew Duffy: We knew after talking to the parents that they would go to jail for him. … knowing the degree that the parents were helping him … And his resources, his intelligence, we had to take a different approach on it …
Supervisory Marshal Matthew Duffy: … we needed to focus in on the parents … they probably would lead us to him.
Supervisory Marshal Matthew Duffy: … they would go to the ends of the earth to help support and hide him.
Anne-Marie Green: And what does that mean?
Deputy Marshal Kevin Perreault: Patience.
And they would need plenty of it. Weeks went by without an arrest. They wondered if they missed something — and if their murder suspect had outmaneuvered them?
UNRAVELING QINXUAN PAN’S PLOT
Five weeks passed without a solid lead on the MIT student wanted for Kevin Jiang’s murder.
Anne-Marie Green: Can you give me a real sense of the pressure.
Det. Joe Galvan: Yeah, because this became so high profile so fast … it was — it was just heightened.
Then the manhunt for Pan suddenly heated up. Police said his mom told them she suspected her son killed himself. But they noticed his parents had a lot of banking activity.
Deputy Marshal Kevin Perreault: We start to see large sums of cash being withdrawn.
Anne-Marie Green: How much?
Deputy Marshal Kevin Perreault: At that time it was about $5,000, $10,000.
Det. Joe Galvan: That’s a large sum of money that someone could use to get out the country.
Supervisory Marshal Matthew Duffy: They still have family in China.
And then Pan’s parents rented a car.
Deputy Marshal Kevin Perreault: And they start traveling south again.
But the vehicle’s GPS system the Marshals were tracking went dark.
Anne-Marie Green: Did they turn it off?
Supervisory Marshal Matthew Duffy: It was disabled.
By then, investigators said they knew that their son had disabled GPS systems in several cars he drove in the runup to Kevin’s murder.
Deputy Marshal Kevin Perreault: Counter tactics.
Supervisory Marshal Matthew Duffy: Counter tactics …
At one point, surveillance cameras at a Georgia mall recorded Pan’s father purchasing a computer.
Deputy Marshal Kevin Perreault: Now this is during COVID. So everybody has their masks on. … We see the father walk in. … And probably about 10 minutes later, we see an individual fitting the description of the son. … So, the story of the suicide out in the woods … that’s — that’s not true.
Deputy Marshal Kevin Perreault: So from there … the parents end up traveling back north and —
Supervisory Marshal Matthew Duffy: Once they’re in Connecticut, the GPS comes back on.
Deputy Marshal Kevin Perreault: We felt — we felt the clock was really ticking.
And it ticked away for nearly two more months until May 4, 2021, when Pan’s parents drove off for a third time. But there was a difference.
Deputy Marshal Kevin Perreault: They were traveling with another couple …
Anne-Marie Green: What do you think the deal was with the other couple?
Deputy Marshal Kevin Perreault: Yeah, make it appear that it’s a regular trip … There’s no big deal, we’re just going on a trip, meet some friends … we’re not here to help our son.
Pan’s parents and their unwitting companions were eventually placed under surveillance at a North Carolina hotel, where Marshals interviewed a clerk after the Pans checked out.
Det. Joe Galvan: At one point … Quixuan Pan’s mother. … came to the clerk’s desk late at night and asked to borrow his phone.
This is a picture of Qinxuan Pan’s mother Hong Huang making the call at a Georgia hotel that broke the case wide open.
U.S. Marshals
Det. Joe Galvan: After she used his phone, she deleted the number from his phone.
Anne-Marie Green: Were you able to find that number?
Deputy Marshal Kevin Perreault: Yes.
Supervisory Marshal Matthew Duffy: We were.
The Marshals tracked the phone to a boarding house near the University of Alabama in Montgomery.
Anne-Marie Green: So, you guys are closing in —
Det. Joe Galvan: Yeah.
Supervisory Marshal Matthew Duffy: They went there with a small army, around 20 guys … they ended up finding his room and they knocked on it and he just came out and said, I’m who you’re looking for.
Deputy Marshal Kevin Perreault: He had, uh, approximately $20,000 cash on him. He had his father’s passport … And he had had multiple communication devices on him.
Supervisory Marshal Matthew Duffy: Seven SIM cards —
Deputy Marshal Kevin Perreault: Seven SIM cards and um —
Supervisory Marshal Matthew Duffy: — and the computer.
Pan was arrested for the murder of Kevin Jiang and brought back to Connecticut. He maintained his innocence, but a judge ordered him held on $20 million bond.
Deputy Marshal Kevin Perreault: Huge relief …
His case was delayed by the pandemic, but investigators had amassed a trove of evidence.
Remember that license plate imprint on Kevin’s car? Police say it matched the plate on the bumper of the SUV Pan was driving when Kevin was rear ended.
And forensic tests revealed that Pan’s DNA was on the gun and ammo found outside Arby’s…and Kevin’s blood was also on Pan’s hat, and on the gear shift of the SUV pan was driving the night Kevin was murdered.
Anne-Marie Green: Was there anything missing?
Stacey Miranda: The murder weapon.
Turns out, the gun recovered at the Arby’s was not the gun that was used to kill Kevin.
“Who knows where that murder weapon ended up,” said Supervisory Assistant State’s Attorney Stacey Miranda.
But there was so much other evidence that Pan’s lawyer William Gerace recommended he cut a deal.
William Gerace: Overwhelming evidence. Overwhelming evidence.
Qinxuan Pan was charged with Kevin Jiang’s murder, accepted a plea deal, and was sentenced in April 2024 to serve 35 years in prison.
U.S. Marshals
On Feb. 29, 2024, three years after Kevin’s killing, Pan pleaded guilty to his murder in exchange for serving 35 years in prison without parole.
Stacey Miranda: … and had he not been stuck on the railroad tracks, this still might not be a solved case. We might not know who did this.
At his sentencing in April, Pan sat silently as Kevin’s loved ones and friends described their loss. By court order, the camera was fixed on him. Some of Kevin’s mother’s remarks were read by a family friend.
ESTHER: I was dreaming that Kevin will have a few beautiful children after getting married. … this beautiful and joyful dream is destroyed. I am left alone by myself. … I will never see Kevin smile again. (emotional)
Then Kevin’s mother decided to speak.
LINDA LIU: To charge the murderer, Pan, 35 years in prison is too short and too light …
Qinxuan Pan, who sat with his head bowed during sentencing, looks up in court when Zion Perry rose to address him.
CBS News
Pan never explained why he killed Kevin, but the only time he looked up was when Zion Perry rose to speak.
ZION PERRY: I wanted to address Pan specifically. … Although your sentence ifs far less than you deserve … there is also mercy. May God have mercy on you. And may he have mercy on all of us.
Then Pan briefly addressed the court.
QINXUAN PAN: Your honor, um, what I’m thinking about is my action and the horrible consequences. … I feel sorry for what my actions caused and for everyone affected … I fully accept my penalties.
JUDGE HARMON: Court is gonna impose the agreed upon sentence of 35 years.
Finally, Judge Harmon passed sentence, and Pan was led away in handcuffs.
Anne-Marie Green: Did you ever consider charging his parents?
Stacey Miranda: We couldn’t charge them … because we couldn’t prove that they knew when they picked him up that he was — had committed a murder.
Anne-Marie Green: So they might be lucky that they didn’t find themselves charged as well.
Stacey Miranda: 100%.
“48 Hours” reached out to Pan’s parents for comment but did not hear back.
Now Kevin’s friends are left to wonder what Kevin, a man of deep faith, might have thought about his killer.
Anne-Marie Green: Do you think Kevin would’ve forgiven Pan?
Nasya Hubbard: Yes … I do.
Capt. Jamila Ayeh: Without a doubt.
Nasya Hubbard: Yeah.
The officers visited Kevin’s grave after they spoke to “48 Hours.” Hubbard recalled her first time there when she says she felt Kevin’s presence.
“He gave me a lot of joy,” Linda Liu said of her son.
Kevin Jiang/Instagram
Anne-Marie Green: And did something happen?
Nasya Hubbard: It’s just like wind blew, you know? And I was —
Anne-Marie Green: Did you feel like it was him?
Nasya Hubbard: Um, I felt like it was definitely different, as if like a peace kind of like, I want you to carry on, don’t be — don’t be sad that I’m gone. … Just keep going.
Qinxuan Pan is scheduled to be released in 2056, when he is 65 years old.
Produced by Murray Weiss. Emma Steele is the field producer. Elena DiFiore, Marc Goldbaum and David Dow are the development producers. Gary Winter and George Baluzy are the editors. Patti Aronofsky is the senior producer. Nancy Kramer is the executive story editor. Judy Tygard is the executive producer.
Providence, R.I. — Information from a tipster who had a strange encounter with another man on a sidewalk outside Brown University was key to police identifying the suspect they believe killed two students at the school and then two days later gunned down a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor.
Known only as “John” in a Providence police affidavit, the source is being hailed by investigators as the key figure who gave law enforcement the details needed to determine who was behind the Brown shooting, as well as the killing of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who was shot in his Brookline home Monday.
Ever since a shooter unloaded more than 40 rounds inside a Brown engineering building, anxiety and frustration has plagued the Providence, Rhode Island, community as police appeared no closer to identifying the person.
Yet on the sixth day of the investigation, the case gathered steam, ending with police announcing late Thursday they had found the suspected gunman dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
The tipster, John, was the reason.
“He blew this case right open,” said Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha of the information provided by the individual that resulted in finding the gunman nearly 24 hours later.
“When you crack it, you crack it,” he said.
According to police, John had several encounters with 48-year-old Claudio Neves Valente before Saturday’s attack. As police posted images of a person of interest — now identified as Neves Valente — John began posting on the social media forum Reddit that he recognized the person and theorized that police should look into “possibly a rental” gray Nissan. Reddit users urged him to tell the FBI, and John said he did.
As police reviewed surveillance video, they saw another man “in close proximity” to the person of interest, and they posted an image of him in hopes he would come forward. That man turned out to be John.
“We didn’t know they were the same person until John approached a Providence police officer and came into the Providence police station to give an interview. And once we had that interview, we were on the path very quickly to identifying our suspect,” Neronha said in an interview.
The police affidavit said they learned about the tip on Dec. 16, three days after the shooting and a day after the tip line was created.
Up until that point, the police affidavit says officials had not connected a vehicle to the possible shooter.
That detail led them to get more video of a Nissan Sentra sedan with Florida plates and enabled Providence police officers to tap into a network of more than 70 street cameras operated around the city by surveillance company Flock Safety.
The affidavit says John gave investigators additional critical details: He encountered Neves Valente in the bathroom of the engineering building just hours before the attack, where John noted the suspect’s clothing was “inappropriate and inadequate for the weather.”
During his police interview, John recognized photos of the suspect’s car and then what John thought was probably the suspect from photos of him at an Alamo car rental in November, according to the affaidavit.
John also bumped into Neves Valente outside, mere blocks from the building, where John watched Neves Valente “suddenly” turn around from the Nissan when he saw John. What ensued was then a “game of cat and mouse,” according to John’s testimony – where the two would encounter each other and Neves Valente would run away.
At one point, John says he yelled out “Your car is back there, why are you circling the block?”
“The Suspect responded, ‘I don’t know you from nobody,’ then Suspect repeatedly asked, ‘Why are you harassing me?’” according to the affidavit.
John told police he eventually saw Neves Valente approach the Nissan sedan once more and decided to walk away.
“Respectfully, I have said all I have to say on the matter to the right people,” John wrote on Reddit Wednesday night.
On Friday, the FBI would not reveal whether John will receive the $50,000 reward the bureau had offered for information about the Brown shooting.
“The FBI maintains longstanding policy not to confirm the identity of individuals who assist the FBI by providing tips or information,” the bureau said in a statement to CBS News. “Additionally, the FBI will not comment on whether reward money has been paid and to whom. The FBI takes this position for privacy protection, and to ensure the public’s continued cooperation and incentivization with any future assistance. Receiving tips from the public remains one of the FBI’s best tools in preventing, detecting, and deterring crime.”
On Thursday, Ted Docks, special agent in charge of the FBI, said it was possible when asked by reporters if John would receive the reward money.
“It would be logical to think that, absolutely, that individual would be entitled to that,” he said.
(AP) – An autopsy determined that the man suspected in last weekend’s attack at Brown University and the fatal shooting of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor days later had been dead for two days when his body was found, New Hampshire’s attorney general’s office said Friday
Authorities found Claudio Neves Valente, 48, dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound at a New Hampshire storage facility on Thursday night, said Providence’s police chief, Col. Oscar Perez.
The autopsy determined that Neves Valente, a Portuguese national who had been living in the U.S., died on Tuesday, the same day that his countryman, MIT professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro died at a hospital, New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella’s office said in a statement. It didn’t note an exact time of death.
Authorities believe that after killing two students and wounding nine others last Saturday at Brown, where he was a graduate student studying physics during the 2000-01 school year, Neves Valente shot Loureiro at his Boston-area home on Monday night.
Investigators on Friday were still trying to sort out why Neves Valente allegedly opened fire on the campus decades after he dropped out and later killed Loureiro, whom he attended school with in Portugal in the 1990s.
Motive is still unclear The discovery of Neves Valente’s body at a New Hampshire storage facility ended the nearly weeklong hunt for the person who killed two students and wounded nine others in a Brown lecture hall last Saturday. Investigators believe the onetime Brown student killed Loureiro in his home in Brookline, a Boston suburb about 50 miles (80 kilometers) north of Providence, on Monday. Perez said as far as investigators know, Neves Valente acted alone.
Portugal’s foreign minister, Paulo Rangel, said Friday that the government was taken aback by revelations that a Portuguese man is the main suspect in the mass shooting at Brown and the killing of Loureiro.
Rangel said Portugal has provided “very broad cooperation” in the case. He said in comments to the national news agency Lusa that “the investigation is far from over.”
Brown University President Christina Paxson said while Neves Valente is a former Brown student, “he has no current affiliation with the university.”
Neves Valente and Loureiro attended the same academic program at a university in Portugal between 1995 and 2000, U.S. attorney for Massachusetts Leah B. Foley said. Loureiro graduated from the physics program at Instituto Superior T袮ico, Portugal’s premier engineering school, in 2000, according to his MIT faculty page. That same year, Neves Valente was let go from his temporary student support and faculty liaison position at the Lisbon university, according to an archive of a termination notice from the school’s president at the time.
Neves Valente, who was born in Torres Novas, Portugal, about 75 miles (121 kilometers) north of Lisbon, had come to Brown on a student visa. He eventually obtained legal permanent resident status in September 2017, Foley said. It wasn’t immediately clear where he was between taking a leave of absence from the school in 2001 and getting the visa in 2017. His last known residence was in Miami.
After officials revealed the suspect’s identity, President Donald Trump suspended the green card lottery program that allowed Neves Valente to stay in the United States.
There are still “a lot of unknowns” in regard to motive, Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said. “We don’t know why now, why Brown, why these students and why this classroom,” he said.
Tip helps investigators connect the dots The FBI previously said it knew of no links between the Rhode Island and Massachusetts shootings.
Police credited a person who had several encounters with Neves Valente for providing a crucial tip that led authorities to him.
After police shared security video of a person of interest, the witness — known only as “John” in a Providence police affidavit — recognized him and posted his suspicions on the social media forum Reddit. Reddit users urged him to tell the FBI, and John said he did.
John said he encountered Neves Valente about two hours before the attack in a bathroom in the engineering building, where the shooting occurred, and noticed he was wearing inappropriate clothing for the weather, according to the affidavit. Still before the attack, he saw Neves Valente suddenly turn away from a Nissan sedan when he saw John.
“When you do crack it, you crack it. And that person led us to the car, which led us to the name,” Neronha said.
His tip pointed investigators to a Nissan Sentra with Florida plates. That enabled Providence police to tap into a street camera network operated in the city by surveillance company Flock Safety to track the vehicle.
After leaving Rhode Island, Providence officials said Neves Valente stuck a Maine license plate over his rental car’s plate to help conceal his identity.
Investigators found footage of Neves Valente entering an apartment building near Loureiro’s in a Boston suburb. About an hour later, Neves Valente was seen entering the Salem, New Hampshire, storage facility where he was found dead, Foley said. He had with him a satchel and two firearms, Neronha said.
Victims include renowned physicist, political organizer and aspiring doctor Loureiro, a 47-year-old physicist and fusion scientist, joined MIT in 2016 and was named last year to lead the school’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, one of its largest laboratories. The scientist from Viseu, Portugal, had been working to explain the physics behind astronomical phenomena such as solar flares.
The two Brown students killed during a study session for final exams were 19-year-old sophomore Ella Cook, who was vice presdient of the Brown College Republicans, and 18-year-old freshman MukhammadAziz Umurzokov, who aspired to be a doctor.
Six of those wounded were in stable condition and three had been discharged as of Thursday, officials said.
Although Brown officials say there are 1,200 cameras on campus, the attack happened in an older part of the engineering building that has few, if any, cameras. And investigators believe the shooter entered and left through a door that faces a residential street bordering campus, which might explain why the cameras Brown does have didn’t capture footage of the person.
The gunman behind the shooting at Brown University also killed an MIT professor on Monday, according to Leah Foley, U.S. attorney for the District of Massachusetts. See Foley’s full remarks from Thursday night.
Manhunt ongoing in multiple states for suspect in Brown shooting, sources say
The ongoing, active manhunt for the Brown University shooting suspect is now taking place in multiple states, law enforcement sources tell CBS News.
Search on for suspect, rented vehicle in Brown University shooting, sources say
Investigators are searching for a suspect in the Brown University shooting and a car that the person is believed to have rented, according to multiple law enforcement sources.
Authorities believe the rented vehicle is the same make and model of a car that was also detected in the vicinity of the apartment of MIT professor Nuno Loureiro, who was shot at his residence on Monday and died in a hospital the following day, the sources said.
Murdered MIT professor remembered as a “brilliant scientist”
Nuno Loureiro, a nuclear science and engineering professor from Portugal, taught plasma physics at MIT and led its Plasma Science and Fusion Center.
“Nuno was not only a brilliant scientist, he was a brilliant person,” colleague Dennis Whyte said in an obituary published Tuesday by MIT. “He shone a bright light as a mentor, friend, teacher, colleague and leader and was universally admired for his articulate, compassionate manner. His loss is immeasurable to our community at the PSFC, NSE and MIT, and around the entire fusion and plasma research world.”
Authorities are investigating his death as a homicide.
Brown University mourning 2 “brilliant and beloved” students
The two students killed in the shooting at Brown University on Saturday, Ella Cook and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, are being remembered as “brilliant and beloved — as members of our campus community, but even more by their friends and families,” Brown’s president, Christina H. Paxson, wrote in a letter to the university community.
Cook, a sophomore from Alabama, was vice president of Brown’s College Republicans.
“Ella was a devoted Christian and a committed conservative who represented the very best of Alabama,” Alabama Lt. Governor Will Ainsworth said in a post on X. “A bright future was ended much too soon.”
Umurzokov, an 18-year-old freshman, was studying biochemistry and neuroscience. His sister, Samira Umurzokova, said he was helping a friend study for an economics final when he was shot.
A memorial for Brown University shooting victims Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov and Ella Cook on the campus of Brown University on Dec. 16, 2025.
John Tlumacki/The Boston Globe via Getty Images
“It’s just heartbreaking for the community, we’re all really in shock right now,” student Jack Cox told CBS News Boston.
Managing diabetes already brings stress from medications and long-term health risks. Regular glucose checks only add to the weight. Most people test with finger pricks or wear a patch that needs a sensor under the skin. If you dislike needles, this part can feel like the hardest task of the day.
Researchers at MIT are working on a new option. They developed a device that shines near-infrared light on your skin and reads your blood sugar without breaking the surface. It works through Raman spectroscopy, a method that looks at how light scatters when it hits molecules in your tissue.
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MIT’s light-based scanner reads blood sugar through the skin without a single prick.(iStock)
The current setup is about the size of a shoebox. You rest your arm on top for a 30-second scan. A small beam shines through a glass window onto your skin. The light returns with tiny shifts in wavelength that reveal what molecules are present.
Earlier Raman systems pulled in about 1,000 spectral bands with plenty of noise. The MIT team discovered that they only need three bands to calculate glucose levels. With fewer signals to process, the device becomes smaller, faster and more affordable. This boost also improves speed since the system no longer sorts through redundant data.
In a four-hour study, a volunteer drank two glucose drinks while researchers took readings every five minutes. The new scanner matched the accuracy of two commercial glucometers the participant wore. That result surprised the team since the device is still in early development.
Progress toward a wearable
After perfecting the shoebox version, MIT engineers built a prototype the size of a cellphone. That unit is now in clinical testing with healthy and prediabetic volunteers. A larger trial with people who have diabetes is expected next year.
The long-term goal is even more exciting. Researchers believe they can shrink the hardware to a watch size. They also want to confirm that the system reads accurately across many skin tones. If these steps succeed, a wrist-based glucose monitor could be possible.
A quick 30-second scan can match the accuracy of today’s commercial glucose monitors.(iStock)
How this compares to other needle-free attempts
This light-based method joins other ideas that try to move past needles. A recent chest strap used ECG signals to predict glucose levels. It looked promising, but it still needs time before it reaches consumers. Interest in noninvasive monitoring keeps growing since so many people want relief from the pain of repeated skin punctures or adhesive patches.
If you or someone you love manages diabetes, fewer needle sticks could change your routine. A quick scan may replace the stress of drawing blood or inserting a sensor. The accuracy seen in early testing shows that noninvasive tools are not a distant dream. They could help you catch swings in your levels faster and bring more comfort to a daily task that often feels overwhelming.
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Kurt’s key takeaways
A handheld or watch-sized glucose scanner would mark a major shift in diabetes care. MIT’s work brings that future closer with a design that reads your chemistry through light. The next few clinical trials will show how well it performs in real conditions.
Researchers are already testing a smaller wearable design that could shrink to watch size.(iStock)
What feature would matter most to you in a needle-free glucose monitor? Let us know by writing to us at Cyberguy.com
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Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson is an award-winning tech journalist who has a deep love of technology, gear and gadgets that make life better with his contributions for Fox News & FOX Business beginning mornings on “FOX & Friends.” Got a tech question? Get Kurt’s free CyberGuy Newsletter, share your voice, a story idea or comment at CyberGuy.com.
Researchers at MIT have been working with the South Korean beauty company Amorepacific for the past few years to develop a wearable “electronic skin” platform that can provide real-time insights about skin aging and make personalized skincare recommendations, and it’s due to debut at CES 2026 as “Skinsight.” Skinsight, which was announced as one of the CES 2026 Innovation Award Honorees this week, is a Bluetooth-equipped sensor patch that sticks to the skin and works with a mobile app, tracking skin tightness, UV exposure, temperature and moisture.
An artist’s rendering of the Skinsight patch showing various sensors and a bluetooth module (Amorepacific)
Based on the readings, the AI-powered app will approximate how the different factors might contribute to or speed up skin aging, and suggest the products best suited for the job so the user can incorporate them into their skincare routine. The patch is designed to be breathable and withstand sweat so it can stay on for long periods of time. The team hasn’t yet shared on Skinsight’s availability and cost.
As AI sweeps through higher education, a growing number of professors have been drawing a line in the sand—banning AI tools from the classroom and returning to classic “blue book” exams to ensure authentic, human-driven learning. David Joyner of Georgia Tech told Fortune that he’s heard blue-book sales are up something like 50% nationwide. In fact, The Wall Street Journal reported in May that they they’ve risen even higher at some colleges, such as the University of California, Berkeley, whose bookstore reported an 80% surge over the last two years.
But Joyner, who among other things is Georgia Tech’s executive director of online education, where he’s long been a leader in the online education space with an ultra-cheap $7,000 computer science Masters degree, has other ideas. He and Anant Agarwal, an award-winning professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have cloned Joyner in cyberspace and created an artificial intelligence (AI) professor.
Joyner’s latest project on the online education platform edX, an experimental pilot titled “Foundations of Generative AI,” is something new, Fortune can exclusively reveal. It uses a virtual avatar named DAI-vid, modeled after Joyner’s own appearance and voice. The avatar delivers lectures while wearing a signature binary-coded bracelet. Joyner explained that if you see him onscreen wearing a bracelet, that’s actually DAI-vid talking.
The rise of the ‘super teacher’
Agarwal became CEO of edX in 2012 for exactly this outcome, when Harvard and MIT co-founded the nonprofit based off Agarwal’s MITx initiative. Ever since, he has been using the platform to teach far-reaching “open courses” (also known as MOOCs, or massive online open courses) for years, with the first edX course being an MIT lecture on circuits and electronics that drew 155,000 students from 162 countries within one year, according to edX, and has now surpassed 1 million. The open courses offered by edX have since grown to over 2,000 online courses reaching over 17 million people.
The organization has grown from a nonprofit, jointly founded by Harvard and MIT with $30 million investments from each, into a for-profit entity following its acquisition by 2U for $800 million in 2021, when Agarwal became edX’s chief academic officer. With edX now firmly in the for-profit area of open courses, competing against players such as Coursera, profit is a consideration but edX reiterated to Fortune that this AI pilot is not part of monetization efforts, although it is not housed within edX’s nonprofit wing, either.
In the years since, Agarwal told Fortune, edX has grown to reach millions of people, in line with its mission. For instance, he noted that Harvard’s David Malan has taught an online course on edX that has drawn over 7 million users, while Agarwal’s own circuits course has been taken by at least a million students worldwide. Agarwal said he strongly believes that AI technology will help more professors reach similar millions of people, and that’s why he approached Joyner about the idea of an AI-generated open course.
Agarwal said Joyner is his “go-to person for things like this” and mentioned how much Joyner has done to democratize online learning, including his computer science degree recognized by, among others, Fast Company for its low-cost accessibility. Stressing that the duo co-developed the course as an experimental pilot, and they want to harvest feedback and learnings.
At the time, Joyner was developing a new generative AI module for the aforementioned online computer science program, specifically the Master of Science degree. He had two bad options: a text-based format that could be easily updated but boring, and a filmed course that would be outdated within months, at the rate of technological progress. Using AI tools offered a way for him to do both, he realized. The result is Foundations of Generative AI: a three-week course on edX that feels like a timely video course but can be editedand updatedby Joyner with the help of AI tools at any point.
The course introduces Joyner’s avatar—DAI-vid—upfront, so students know they’re watching AI-generated instruction. The avatar is clearly identified with a visible indicator: a bracelet created by Joyner’s daughter (which spells AI in binary digits) ensures students always know when the presenter is the AI. Joyner used HeyGen, a generative AI video platform, to create his avatar, training it with a five-minute studio recording that captured his appearance and speech patterns.
Agarwal said he was excited by the results: “AI is augmenting the teacher and turns teachers into super teachers.” Far from eliminating teachers, it is multiplying their reach and impact, he said. “It democratizes teaching.” Everybody can be a great teacher with these AI tools, he insisted, but there’s a catch: these AI tools still don’t substitute for human skills and knowhow.
“If you’re a bad teacher, this isn’t going to make you a good teacher,” Agarwal said. “But if you’re a good teacher, this is going to make it so you can teach a lot more people and teach a lot more subjects and teach in a lot more contexts. But you still have to have that expertise.”
Joyner agreed, clarifying that AI gets added to the relationship after all the intellectual heavy lifting by (the human version of) him is done: “This is an AI assisting an instructor, but the instructor ultimately [is] the author and responsible party for everything.” He said it’s definitely not the case that he’s telling a robot to design his course, it’s more like he’s working with robots to amplify the course delivery once he’s done designing it himself.
Agarwal said he knows many professors “who can write quite well, but are tongue-tied in front of a camera,” lacking the kind of hand gestures, enthusiasm, and even voice inflection that makes for a successful instructor. He explained that he sees AI as part of a natural progression in teaching, noting the huge advances in course instruction from even 10, 20 years ago. The richest colleges and universities were able to improve education, taking one professor’s wonky scribblings and turning them into slick presentations with the help of “graphic designers, video editors, text writers, amazing teaching assistants, all kinds of people—a professor could have a huge team,” Agarwal said. A lot of those functions can now be done by AI, he added, “and every teacher at every college, poor or rich, can have an amazing team and a supporting cast.” He said that instead of harming education, AI will “democratize” it.
For Joyner, working with AI has made course creation a more personal process: “The analogy I have is when I do a traditional course production, it feels like a Marvel big-budget movie production… This [AI process] feels more like an auteur indie film.” He said he feels like this course “captures” him much more—even though it’s DAI-vid talking, not David.
AI-assisted grading
Fortune has previously reported on the thorny question of education in the age of AI. Jure Leskovec, a computer science professor at Stanford and himself a startup founder, told Fortune that he shifted two years ago to completely hand-written and hand-graded essays. Students, especially his teaching assistants, were asking for it because they wanted to be sure they were really learning about the subject and that required a manual process given AI’s capabilities. He said that instead of saving him time, AI has made it so exams take “much longer” to grade, creating “additional work” and “fewer trees in the world” from all the paper he’s printing out.
To be sure, an intensive, semester-long course at Stanford like this one is very different from a three-week open course like Joyner’s. Still, Joyner is taking nearly the opposite tack, prioritizing scale and efficiencies through AI-assisted grading, with safeguards built into the process. Essays are evaluated through a tool called “GradyAI,” and the key thing, according to Agarwal, “is that students learn better from rapid feedback cycles.” He explained that traditionally, students submit an essay, wait a week, and get feedback, but GradyAI makes feedback nearly instant. “And anything a TA would need to escalate, a human can still take over. We see this as a crucible to experiment with the best of both AI and human teaching.”
When asked about potential mistakes or even hallucinations in the grading of papers through AI technology, Agarwal explained that the grading tool provides very detailed feedback, and students can ask for a regrade if they disagree. “Within a minute, GradyAI will have regraded them based on the feedback. And the students can escalate to a faculty member for a live look, if they want to.”
Regarding the subject of cheating and whether students might use AI to write essays, edX told Fortune that GradyAI has cheating detection built into its algorithms that can be turned on or off depending on the application. This works by extracting a student’s skills from their submitted assignments and flagging inconsistencies with the skills that are subsequently displayed. It uses the same skills extraction algorithms to report a student’s skill development over a course as a demonstration of learning progress.
Agarwal said the system was also designed to accommodate privacy laws and newly emerging regulations in areas like Europe, and this is a bit difficult as it’s such a nascent space. “The laws are changing so fast.”
One of the most transformative aspects is accessibility. The tools allow courses to be instantly translated and altered to fit many different learning styles and needs—including learners with disabilities, or those needing support in different languages. “With one course, I can explode it exponentially a million-fold and truly customize learning to each student,” Agarwal said. He said he envisioned a future where every learner can “zap” a course into their preferred level, language, or pace—radically personalizing education at scale.
The coming tsunami
In a separate interview, Agarwal made clear that he’s a big believer inAI, having spent decades exploring its potential, from building energy-efficient “organic computing” models in the early 2000s to pioneering online learning with edX’s nearly 100 million global learners today. He is incredibly bullish on AI, telling Fortune that this will be “the decade to beat all decades” in terms of technological advancement.
He acknowledged the recent finding from colleagues at MIT that 95% of corporate AI pilots are failing to generate a return on investment, but added that that’s just part of how science works: “I’m not surprised. I mean, I’ve been a technologist long enough [to wonder] why is that even news? Remember, I was becoming an MIT professor in the mid-’80s when the first mobile phone just came out, and it was as big as a coffee machine.” The real breakthrough came decades later. Agarwal said he was able to access the internet in 1987 through his research and “it was crappy, crummy, text-based.” AI, he added, is going to be “bigger than microwave ovens. It’s bigger than the automobile. It’s bigger than, probably the thing that comes closest would be the computer.”
Agarwal also acknowledged the chaos unleashed in job markets and among students, pointing to coding as a specific example. “The boot-camp business completely imploded and … does not exist anymore, pretty much. And it’s because all those entry-level coding jobs went away because coding moved to a higher level.”
Agarwal predicted a “tsunami of people that are coming who are hell-bent on upskilling with AI,” and said he’s working with major corporate clients who “want to upskill tens of thousands of people within their own company … It is much, much easier to upskill an existing employee than try to lay off and hire somebody else. So my sense is that this upskilling tsunami is coming.” (Agarwal declined to name the client, citing confidentiality.)
In other words, millions of people will need new skills, and they might be getting them from a professor’s avatar, wearing a bracelet, with a name like DAI-vid.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said Friday she “cannot support” a White House proposal that asks MIT and eight other universities to adopt President Donald Trump’s political agenda in exchange for favorable access to federal funding.
MIT is among the first to express forceful views either in favor of or against an agreement the White House billed as providing “multiple positive benefits,” including “substantial and meaningful federal grants.” Leaders of the University of Texas system said they were honored its flagship university in Austin was invited, but most other campuses have remained silent as they review the document.
In a letter to Trump administration officials, MIT President Sally Kornbluth said MIT disagrees with provisions of the proposal, including some that would limit free speech and the university’s independence. She said it’s inconsistent with MIT’s belief that scientific funding should be based on merit alone.
“Therefore, with respect, we cannot support the proposed approach to addressing the issues facing higher education,” Kornbluth said in a letter to Education Secretary Linda McMahon and White House officials.
The higher education compact circulated last week requires universities to make a wide range of commitments in line with Trump’s political agenda on topics from admissions and women’s sports to free speech and student discipline. The universities were invited to provide “limited, targeted feedback” by Oct. 20 and make a decision no later than Nov. 21.
Others that received the 10-page proposal are: Vanderbilt, the University of Pennsylvania, Dartmouth College, the University of Southern California, the University of Arizona, Brown University and the University of Virginia. It was not clear how the schools were selected or why.
Colleges have faced mounting pressure to reject the proposal University leaders face immense pressure to reject the compact amid opposition from students, faculty, free speech advocates and higher education groups. Leaders of some other universities have called it extortion. The mayor and city council in Tucson, home of the University of Arizona, formally opposed the compact, calling it an “unacceptable act of federal interference.”
Even some conservatives have dismissed the compact as a bad approach. Frederick Hess, director of education policy at the American Enterprise Institute, called it “profoundly problematic” and said the government’s requests are “ungrounded in law.”
At the University of Virginia, officials invited campus feedback on the proposal this week. A message from university leaders said it would be “very difficult” to accept certain terms of the arrangement and said the decision will be guided by “principles of academic freedom and free inquiry.”
Democrats in the Virginia Senate threatened to cut the university’s funding if it signed the deal. In a letter to the university’s leaders on Tuesday, top Democrats called the compact a trap and said the state would not “subsidize an institution that has ceded its independence to federal political control.”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, issued a similar ultimatum to USC last week.
At Brown, which already struck an agreement with the White House in July to resolve a series of investigations, university president Christina H. Paxson said Friday she is seeking campus input to decide how or whether to respond to the new proposal.
The compact marks a new tactic to seek reforms In its letter to universities, the administration said the compact would strengthen and renew the “mutually beneficial relationship” between universities and the government. That bond faces unprecedented strain as the White House cuts billions of dollars in research funding from campuses it accuses of antisemitism and liberal bias.
The compact is a proactive attempt at reform even as the government continues enforcement through other means, the letter said. The nine universities were invited to become “initial signatories.”
Kornbluth’s letter did not explicitly decline the compact but suggested that its terms are unworkable. Still, she said MIT is already aligned with some of the values outlined in the deal, including prioritizing merit in admissions and making college more affordable.
Kornbluth said MIT was the first to reinstate requirements for standardized admissions tests after the COVID-19 pandemic and admits students based on their talent, ideas and hard work. Incoming undergraduates whose families earn less than $200,000 a year pay nothing for tuition, she added.
“We freely choose these values because they’re right, and we live by them because they support our mission,” Kornbluth wrote.
As part of the compact, the White House asked universities to freeze tuition for U.S. students for five years. Those with endowments exceeding $2 million per undergraduate could not charge tuition at all for students pursuing “hard science” programs.
It asked colleges to require the SAT or ACT for all undergraduate applicants and to eliminate race, sex and other characteristics from admissions decisions. Schools that sign on would also have to accept the government’s binary definition of gender and apply it to campus bathrooms and sports teams.
Much of the compact centers on promoting conservative viewpoints. To make campuses a “vibrant marketplace of ideas” campuses would commit to taking steps including “transforming or abolishing institutional units that purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas.”
As USC weighs its options, MIT has become the first of nine universities to forcefully reject a White House proposal that asks them to adopt President Trump’s conservative political agenda in exchange for favorable access to federal funding.
In a letter to Trump administration officials, MIT President Sally Kornbluth said Friday the campus disagrees with provisions of the proposal, including some that would limit free speech and the university’s independence. She said that Trump’s “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” is inconsistent with MIT’s belief that scientific funding should be based on merit alone.
“Therefore, with respect, we cannot support the proposed approach to addressing the issues facing higher education,” Kornbluth said in a letter to Education Secretary Linda McMahon and White House officials.
The MIT rejection comes as University of Southern California has been roiled by the proposed compact since receiving it earlier this month. The school’s faculty members strongly denounced the offering at a meeting this week, calling it “egregiously invalid,” “probably unconstitutional” and “antithetical to principles of academic freedom.”
But interim President Beong-Soo Kim told the roughly 500 attendees the university “has not made any kind of final decision.”
At the same time, Gov. Gavin Newsom has aggressively weighed in, challenging USC “to do the right thing” and reject the offer. He threatened to withhold state funding to any California university that agrees to it.
White House spokesperson Liz Huston said that “the Trump Administration’s only request is for universities to end discrimination. Any university that refuses this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to transform higher education isn’t serving its students or their parents — they’re bowing to radical, left-wing bureaucrats.”
“The truth is, the best science can’t thrive in institutions that have abandoned merit, free inquiry, and the pursuit of truth,” Huston said. “President Trump encourages universities to join us in restoring academic excellence and commonsense policies.”
What’s in the compact
The higher-education compact circulated this month requires universities to make a wide range of commitments in line with Trump’s political agenda. In exchange, universities that agree to the terms would get more favorable access to federal research grants and additional funding, as well as other benefits.
They would have to accept the government’s definition of gender — two sexes, male and female — and would not be allowed to recognize transgender people’s gender identities. Foreign student enrollment would be restricted. The compact also calls for a five-year tuition freeze for U.S. students.
It asks colleges to require the SAT or ACT for all undergraduate applicants and to eliminate race, sex and other characteristics from admissions decisions. As for free speech, schools would have to commit to promoting a wide range of views on campus — and change or abolish “institutional units that purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas,” according to the compact.
The universities were invited to provide “limited, targeted feedback” by Oct. 20 and make a decision no later than Nov. 21.
Other institutions that received the 10-page proposal are: Vanderbilt, the University of Pennsylvania, Dartmouth College, the University of Arizona, Brown University, the University of Texas and the University of Virginia. It was not clear how the schools were selected or why.
Leaders of the Texas system were “honored” that the Austin campus was chosen to be a part of the compact and its “potential funding advantages,” according to a statement from Kevin Eltife, chair of the board of regents.
University leaders face immense pressure to reject the compact amid opposition from students, faculty, free speech advocates and higher education groups. Leaders of some other universities have called it extortion. The mayor and City Council in Tucson, home of the University of Arizona, formally opposed the compact, calling it an “unacceptable act of federal interference.”
Some conservatives have criticized it. Frederick Hess, director of education policy at the American Enterprise Institute, called it “profoundly problematic” and said the government’s requests are “ungrounded in law.”
“I am deeply sympathetic to the Trump critique of higher education,” he told The Times on Friday. “I support just about every point in the compact, but even I have real concerns about the way it has been framed and proffered.”
But Hess noted that the compact has become something of a “Rorschach test.”
“If you look at it one way, you see a bullying attempt by the administration to impose its will,” he said. “If you look at it another way, it is the Trump administration offering a positive, constructive vision of the federal-university partnership.”
The view from Los Angeles
The USC faculty’s vociferous disapproval of the compact during a meeting of the university’s academic senate on Oct. 6 was in line with the reactions of similar bodies at other affected campuses.
In stark terms, USC department heads, professors and others condemned the compact, with several saying there should be no negotiations with the Trump administration.
Kim, the interim president, attended the meeting, but did not share his opinion of the compact. He noted that USC did not solicit the offer from Trump. “I wanted to make sure that I heard from the community and received your input,” he said.
Asked for comment Friday, a USC spokesperson referred The Times to comments Kim made Oct. 3, when he said that he would consult with the school’s board of trustees and other stakeholders to “hear their wide-ranging perspectives” on the proposal.
Trump’s proposal comes at a fraught time for USC, which is in the midst of widespread layoffs as it faces down a $200-million budget deficit.
Across town, UCLA has also been grappling with dire financial issues of its own, albeit ones that directly relate to the president’s forceful attempt to remake higher education.
UCLA has been negotiating with the Trump administration over a $1.2-billion settlement proposal that would resolve a federal investigation into alleged civil rights violations on campus. The claims stem from UCLA’s handling of alleged antisemitism during spring 2024 pro-Palestinian protests. UC leaders say the fine would be “devastating” to the 10-campus system and have broadly indicated that other proposals violate the university’s mission and values.
Speaking at a UC-wide academic senate meeting Thursday, UC President James B. Milliken said the “landscape changed” after the Trump administration offered the compact last week to non-UC campuses.
He did not indicate whether the proposal affected UC negotiations but said that there was a “shift from a bespoke pursuit of universities to a wholesale” targeting of higher education, which he suggested put UC in a safer position. He said he did not know the impact of the compact on UCLA.
In some ways, the compact presented to USC matches the settlement proposed to UCLA. Both, for example, make stipulations about binary definitions of gender that exclude transgender people.
But the compact differs in proposing strict limits on foreign student enrollment and the tuition freeze for U.S. citizens.
Although the compact has not been offered to UC, university officials are studying its contents to better understand Trump’s positions on higher education and formulate a negotiation strategy.
Colleges nationwide debate compact
Besides USC and MIT, the compact has been the subject of fierce debate at several other campuses that received it.
At an Oct. 3 convening of the University of Virginia senate attended by interim President Paul G. Mahoney and hundreds of faculty, senate representatives voted down the compact.
According to notes on the meeting provided to The Times, faculty expressed concern over academic freedom, discrimination against transgender individuals — and said they feared complying with it would have a “chilling” effect on free speech.
Three days later, at a meeting of the University of Arizona faculty senate, 81% of voting members rejected the government’s proposal.
At Dartmouth, President Sian Leah Beilock has also expressed hesitation over signing.
“I am deeply committed to Dartmouth’s academic mission and values and will always defend our fierce independence,” Beilock said in a statement. “You have often heard me say that higher education is not perfect and that we can do better. At the same time, we will never compromise our academic freedom and our ability to govern ourselves.”
Some university faculty, including at USC, have voiced skepticism over Trump’s willingness to adhere to the terms of the compact should an institution accept it. That, Hess said, is “a valid concern.”
“If you look at the deal that have been struck [by the Trump administration] around tariffs and tech, there is certainly a sense that deals … are not written in stone,” he said. “Normally, in these conversations, I am usually very skeptical of faculty concerns, but from what we’ve seen … a lot of these practical concerns are very legitimate.”
Can you spell it on the fly? Massachusetts has a new ranking as one of the hardest states to spell and say.
The study conducted by Preply says Massachusetts is a muddle of syllables and tricky double consonants. The word is made up of 13 letters, four syllables, the letter S four times and three different vowels. That can make it a mouthful.
Watch the video atop this story to see what happened when we went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — on Massachusetts Avenue — for a quiz on spelling the Bay State’s name.
Andrea Ronen, a speech language pathologist at Metrowest Medical Center, broke down why the word is a such a workout to the mouth: “The different sounds, whether you have that vibration of your vocal folds. Is it a ‘M’ sound like “Mmmm” or a voiceless sound like ‘T’ where there is no vibration?”
Massachusetts came in at No. 5, with Arkansas taking the top spot.
Liquid AI, a startup spun out of MIT, will today reveal several new AI models based on a novel type of “liquid” neural network that has the potential to be more efficient, less power-hungry, and more transparent than the ones that underpin everything from chatbots to image generators to facial recognition systems.
Liquid AI’s new models include one for detecting fraud in financial transactions, another for controlling self-driving cars, and a third for analyzing genetic data. The company touted the new models, which it is licensing to outside companies, at an event held at MIT today. The company has received funding from investors that include Samsung and Shopify, both of which are also testing its technology.
“We are scaling up,” says Ramin Hasani, cofounder and CEO of Liquid AI, who co-invented liquid networks as a graduate student at MIT. Hasani’s research drew inspiration from the C. elegans, a millimeter-long worm typically found in soil or rotting vegetation. The worm is one of the few creatures to have had its nervous system mapped in its entirety, and it is capable of remarkably complex behavior despite having just a few hundred neurons. “It was once just a science project, but this technology is fully commercialized and fully ready to bring value for enterprises,” Hasani says.
Inside a regular neural network, the properties of each simulated neuron are defined by a static value or “weight” that affects its firing. Within a liquid neural network, the behavior of each neuron is governed by an equation that predicts its behavior over time, and the network solves a cascade of linked equations as the network functions. The design makes the network more efficient and more flexible, allowing it to learn even after training, unlike a conventional neural network. Liquid neural networks are also open to inspection in a way that existing models are not, because their behavior can essentially be rewound to see how it produced an output.
In 2020, the researchers showed that such a network with only 19 neurons and 253 synapses, which is remarkably small by modern standards, could control a simulated self-driving car. While a regular neural network can analyze visual data only at static intervals, the liquid network captures the way visual information changes over time very efficiently. In 2022, Liquid AI’s founders figured out a shortcut that made the mathematical labor needed for liquid neural networks feasible for practical use.
“Energies” is an international group exhibition at the Swiss Institute and numerous partner locations in the surrounding East Village community. Photo Daniel Perez
At a time when the climate crisis dominates public discourse but concrete solutions remain elusive, a new exhibition, “Energies,” at the Swiss Institute in New York revisits a pivotal history of community-driven sustainability actions that made a real impact in the neighborhood. The exhibition centers on an episode from the 1973 oil crisis when the city’s first equity co-op at 519 W 11th Street installed a two-kilowatt wind turbine paired with solar panels. This setup not only powered the building but also fed electricity back to the grid in a moment of continuous power cuts. Con Edison (ED), seeing this as a challenge to its almost absolute monopoly, threatened legal action, but with support from the Attorney General, the co-op unexpectedly won the case. This victory forced all utility companies to accept decentralized energy production, reshaping the rules for energy generation.
“We felt it was very visionary, not only for the time, but also being in this very urban context of New York, of the Lower East Side, or what is now known as the East Village,” Stefanie Hessler, one of the exhibition’s curators, told Observer. Hessler, alongside the team at the Swiss Institute, found people involved with this history and unearthed extensive documentation, including lawsuit files and letters from Con Edison, which, as she notes, “made concessions, but reluctantly.”
Through archival materials and works by various artists displayed at the Swiss Institute and offsite locations, the exhibition fosters an open dialogue on potential solutions to the current ecological and energy crisis. It also highlights the power of community-driven initiatives. As Hessler recounted, “One person, an architect named Travis Price, was invited to testify before Congress, which helped generate the 1978 Public Utilities Regulatory Policies Act.” She was struck by how this group of activists—comprising recent graduates from Yale and MIT in fields like engineering, architecture, and urban planning—managed to enact meaningful change across the United States.
The exhibition also explores the complex intersections between green energy and social justice, featuring historical works and new commissions that examine the socio-political implications of ecological and energy issues at both local and global levels.
In 1973, during the oil crisis, residents of the sweat equity co-op at 519 E 11th Street installed a groundbreaking two-kilowatt wind turbine, providing electricity and lighting for the community amid widespread power outages. Photo Travis Prince
Atop the Swiss Institute, Haroon Mirza’s large solar panel sculpture echoes the 1970s energy experiment by powering other works in the exhibition, including Méret Oppenheim’s semi-permanent audio installation and Ash Arder’s ephemeral butter-based sculpture housed in a refrigerator. The piece alludes to the Dyson sphere, a sci-fi concept from 1937 describing a massive sphere in space that harvests vast amounts of solar energy, reflecting speculative approaches to reimagining not just technology but its application.
“Energies” spans local and global concerns, addressing energy inequalities tied to socio-economic dependencies. Jean Katambayi Mukendi’s Afrolampe (2021) highlights the disparity in energy access, using the example of Lumbashi, a copper-rich city that suffers frequent power outages while its resources are funneled to the Global North for renewable energy production, even as Africa deals with insufficient energy provision. Similarly, Ximena Garrido-Lecca, a vocal advocate for Peru’s Indigenous culture and well-known for her works tracking the impact of natural resource exploitation on different social groups, explores the devastating effects of foreign mining policies in her two-channel video Yacimientos (2013), which documents the long-term environmental degradation and social displacement caused by U.S. extractivist practices.
“It was important for us to look both at a very local history and context, the one that we are in at Swiss Institute and to extend outward and connect to other geographies and locals as well,” Hessler said. The relations between industrialization, global trade and energy consumption and disruption are further explored in Liu Chuang’s single-channel video Untitled (The Festival), which portrays the rapid decline of Dongguan, China’s “world’s factory,” as it shifts from traditional manufacturing to high-tech electronics and A.I., with the artist metaphorically depicting its return to primordial energy sources like fire amid abandoned factories. Vibeke Mascini’s provocative installation Instar (2024) makes the energy generated from burning confiscated cocaine and crystal meth in Rotterdam perceptible, critically examining the links between extractive economies and their geopolitical impacts.
“Energies” explores global energy-related issues through a lens rooted in local history. Photo Daniel Perez
Some artists in the show advocate for a return to Indigenous technologies, seeing them as a more sustainable and symbiotic alternative to current development models. Joar Nango, an architect and artist of Sámi descent, exemplifies this with his installation Skievvar #2 (2024), a structure made of translucent, dried halibut stomachs, a material traditionally used by Sámi communities for its insulating properties in construction. Sharing this belief in ancestral technologies, Cannupa Hanska Luger presents his water shields, first created for a performance supporting the Standing Rock water protectors, used as a peaceful form of protest to defend land. According to Hessler, Hanska Luger plans to further explore this project in the exhibition, placing additional shields around Mirza’s solar panel as a speculative way to “amplify” the captured energy. “He proposed using mirror shields to share energy across the neighborhood’s rooftops. This is a speculative project, it wouldn’t work, but I love how artists make us think differently about what might be possible. Cannupa suggests that a more communal approach to energy creation could reshape how we view building ownership and who can generate energy. It’s a very speculative but also very positive approach.” The Lower East Side Art Center is currently working on developing Hanska Luger’s proposal.
One of the most inspiring aspects of this exhibition is how it extends beyond the Swiss Institute, potentially engaging public spaces and connecting this rich recent history to present-day communities still fighting for these causes. The show also features seminal works by pioneers of “institutional critique” art, such as Gordon Matta-Clark, including drawings from his Energy Tree project, which eventually led him to plant a rosebush in an enclosure at St. Mark’s Church as a gesture of land regeneration. To commemorate the exhibition, a new rosebush has been replanted at the original site. “We found the enclosure, but the rosebush was gone, so we replanted it in the churchyard, and we’re also exhibiting his original drawings alongside his 1976 proposal for a Resource Center and Environmental Youth he made for the John for the Lower East Side in 1976, to show his involvement and activation of the neighborhood,” Hessler explained.
Otobong Nkanga, Social Consequences I: Segregation – Encroaching Barricade – Entangled – Endangered Species – Rationed Measures – Intertwined.Photo Daniel Perez
One of the major large-scale projects involving the neighborhood, and specifically the current residents of the building where the original co-op community at 519 E 11th Street once stood, is a mural conceived by internationally celebrated artist Otobong Nkanga, titled Social Consequences I: Segregation – Encroaching Barricade – Entangled – Endangered Species – Rationed Measures – Intertwined (2009-2024). “We had a lot of conversations with everybody to ensure that what their needs were and what they felt they wanted was being met,” said Hessler. “Eventually, together with the artist, we proposed this mural, and I loved it.” In keeping with Nkanga’s practice, which often reveals complex systems of interdependencies, the mural presents a diagrammatic scheme illustrating the existential links between human systems and nature.
This is just one of many interventions and initiatives in this rich exhibition program, presented in partnership with various local organizations. Another is the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space in a squat on Avenue C, also known as Lozada Avenue, which organized an exhibition documenting neighborhood activism in terms of environmental justice in the neighborhood. “Then there’s another location, the Loizada Inc, a Puerto Rican community center, and their exhibition Equilibrium is about citizen engagement and activation of environmental knowledge building in the neighborhood,” Hessler added. “I think it’s essential to acknowledge this and the existing community. A whole symposium and public program are happening throughout the fall, and the program is ongoing. It’s all on our website, and there’s a map in the booklet distributed at the exhibition.”
“Energies” is on view at the Swiss Institute through January 5th, 2025. The entire program is also available on the Swiss Institute website.
Washington — A pair of brothers from New York and Boston were taken into federal custody Tuesday, accused by prosecutors of devising a novel criminal scheme to steal about $25 million in cryptocurrency from a commonly used blockchain, according to a newly unsealed indictment.
Anton and James Peraire-Bueno were charged with wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering. Investigators accused them of spending months plotting their theft within the Ethereum blockchain, baiting their victims and establishing shell companies to hide their illicit profits.
According to charging documents, the pair studied math and computer science “at one of the most prestigious universities in the country,” which prosecutors said afforded them a unique set of skills that allowed them to carry out the first-of-its-kind endeavor in a matter of seconds. James Peraire-Bueno is listed as a 2021 graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the MIT Registrar’s Office confirmed that Anton Peraire-Bueno earned a B.S. in computer science and engineering in February 2024, and James Peraire-Bueno earned a B.S. in mathematics, computer science and aerospace engineering in June 2019, as well as a M.S. in aeronautics and astronautics in June 2021.
The brothers allegedly started laying the groundwork in December 2022, engaging in what investigators called a “baiting” operation that targeted three specific victim traders on the digital Ethereum platform. They are specifically accused of exploiting the “validators” on the blockchain, vital components of the integrity and security of transactions.
“In doing so, they fraudulently gained access to pending private transactions and used that access to alter certain transactions and obtain their victims’ cryptocurrency,” prosecutors alleged in court documents.
Investigators said the defendants’ plot took months to plan but just 12 seconds to execute, allegedly raking in approximately $25 million from their unwitting victims.
From April and June of last year, Peraire-Buenos are accused of laundering their money through shell companies. Prosecutors said the duo even rejected repeated requests from a victim, the victim’s attorney and an Ethereum representative to return the cryptocurrency.
They were arrested on Tuesday and are expected to make their initial appearances in New York and Boston federal courts on Wednesday.
“As cryptocurrency markets continue to evolve, the Justice Department will continue to root out fraud, support victims, and restore confidence to these markets,” Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said in a statement.
Attorneys for the brothers could not be immediately identified.
Robert Legare is a CBS News multiplatform reporter and producer covering the Justice Department, federal courts and investigations. He was previously an associate producer for the “CBS Evening News with Norah O’Donnell.”
From the picket lines of the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War, to social media posts surrounding the Israel-Hamas conflict today, expressing free speech — and how to better define it — continues to test higher education decision-makers.
Updated: 12:00 AM EDT Apr 16, 2024
The increase in student-led protests at U.S.-based colleges and universities surrounding the October 2023 Israel-Hamas conflict has brought free speech on campus, back into popular discourse. After the actions and suspensions of some student groups led to televised congressional hearings and then the resignation of two elite university presidents, defining and outlining free speech on campus appeared to be at a stalemate. Groups such as, The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, or FIRE are attempting to keep the dialogue going. FIRE is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that works on a national scale to spread awareness regarding free speech rights on college campuses. “We’re seeing large amounts of students professing self-censorship and the culture of free speech being deteriorated on college campuses,” Zach Greenberg said, the senior program officer within campus advocacy at FIRE. “And so while the law remains solid, we do worry about how it’s being applied and how universities actually are defending students’ free speech rights.” By expressing and exercising their free speech rights, student-led groups have consistently influenced federal legislation especially during the 1960s and 1970s. Most notably, the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and Nixon signing the 26th Amendment in 1971, which lowered the voting age from 21 to 18-years-old at the federal level. In the 1960s, the Civil Rights movement was amplified by courageous students such as Claudette Colvin, Diane Nash, the Little Rock Nine, and the Greensboro Four, and several student-led and founded groups such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Black Panther Party. However, protests reached a fever pitch on May 4, 1970, with the Kent State Massacre, in which four students were shot and killed by Ohio State National Guardsmen. Less than two weeks later, on May 15, 1970 at Jackson State in Mississippi, law enforcement fired into a crowd, killing a pre-law student and a local high school student, who was on campus at the time. Following these national tragedies, the Nixon administration assembled a task force to study campus unrest on a national scale. What resulted was a 400-plus page magnum opusEditSign titled, “The Report of the President’s Commission on Campus Unrest,” which analyzed the Kent State and Jackson State tragedies, the history of campus protests stretching back to the American Revolution, and suggestions for students, faculty, and law enforcement moving forward. Although, the Nixon administration hesitated to implement the commission’s suggestions from the lengthy tome, today’s students aren’t limited by formal case studies to share their thoughts and reach a wider audience. Whether students speak formally through congressional hearings (that are subsequently shared on YouTube to view beyond traditional airtimes) or informally through social media posts, clarifying free speech for students in the digital age may continue to be a challenging, but a necessary, discussion. “Students aren’t really having the kind of discussions that they were having, perhaps 10 or 15 years ago,” Greenberg said. “The first step to defending your rights is knowing your rights.”
The increase in student-led protests at U.S.-based colleges and universities surrounding the October 2023 Israel-Hamas conflict has brought free speech on campus, back into popular discourse. After the actions and suspensions of some student groups led to televised congressional hearings and then the resignation of two elite university presidents, defining and outlining free speech on campus appeared to be at a stalemate.
Groups such as, The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, or FIRE are attempting to keep the dialogue going. FIRE is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that works on a national scale to spread awareness regarding free speech rights on college campuses.
“We’re seeing large amounts of students professing self-censorship and the culture of free speech being deteriorated on college campuses,” Zach Greenberg said, the senior program officer within campus advocacy at FIRE. “And so while the law remains solid, we do worry about how it’s being applied and how universities actually are defending students’ free speech rights.”
By expressing and exercising their free speech rights, student-led groups have consistently influenced federal legislation especially during the 1960s and 1970s.
In the 1960s, the Civil Rights movement was amplified by courageous students such as Claudette Colvin, Diane Nash, the Little Rock Nine, and the Greensboro Four, and several student-led and founded groups such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Black Panther Party.
However, protests reached a fever pitch on May 4, 1970, with the Kent State Massacre, in which four students were shot and killed by Ohio State National Guardsmen. Less than two weeks later, on May 15, 1970 at Jackson State in Mississippi, law enforcement fired into a crowd, killing a pre-law student and a local high school student, who was on campus at the time.
Following these national tragedies, the Nixon administration assembled a task force to study campus unrest on a national scale. What resulted was a 400-plus page magnum opus
Although, the Nixon administration hesitated to implement the commission’s suggestions from the lengthy tome, today’s students aren’t limited by formal case studies to share their thoughts and reach a wider audience.
Whether students speak formally through congressional hearings (that are subsequently shared on YouTube to view beyond traditional airtimes) or informally through social media posts, clarifying free speech for students in the digital age may continue to be a challenging, but a necessary, discussion. “Students aren’t really having the kind of discussions that they were having, perhaps 10 or 15 years ago,” Greenberg said. “The first step to defending your rights is knowing your rights.”
“In vitro systems that accurately model in vivo conditions in the gastrointestinal tract may aid the development of oral drugs with greater bioavailability,” the researchers wrote.
“Here we show that the interaction profiles between drugs and intestinal drug transporters can be obtained by modulating transporter expression in intact porcine tissue explants via the ultrasound-mediated delivery of small interfering RNAs and that the interaction profiles can be classified via a random forest model trained on the drug–transporter relationships.”
According to MIT News, which wrote about the study, the researchers made “use of both tissue models and machine-learning algorithms,” which “revealed that a commonly prescribed antibiotic and a blood thinner can interfere with each other.”
The outlet said that discovering “more about which transporters help drugs pass through the digestive tract could also help drug developers improve the absorbability of new drugs by adding excipients that enhance their interactions with transporters.” Likewise, it could “also be applied to drugs now in development.”
“Using this technology, drug developers could tune the formulation of new drug molecules to prevent interactions with other drugs or improve their absorbability. Vivtex, a biotech company co-founded in 2018 by former MIT postdoc Thomas von Erlach, MIT Institute Professor Robert Langer, and Traverso to develop new oral drug delivery systems, is now pursuing that kind of drug-tuning,” MIT News said.
In tests with 24 drugs “with well-characterized drug–transporter interactions,” the researchers said that the “model achieved 100% concordance.”
“For 28 clinical drugs and 22 investigational drugs, the model identified 58 unknown drug–transporter interactions, 7 of which (out of 8 tested) corresponded to drug-pharmacokinetic measurements in mice,” they continued.
“We also validated the model’s predictions for interactions between doxycycline and four drugs (warfarin, tacrolimus, digoxin and levetiracetam) through an ex vivo perfusion assay and the analysis of pharmacologic data from patients. Screening drugs for their interactions with the intestinal transportome via tissue explants and machine learning may help to expedite drug development and the evaluation of drug safety.”
Giovanni Traverso, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at MIT and the senior author of the study, told MIT News that one of the “challenges in modeling absorption is that drugs are subject to different transporters.”
“This study is all about how we can model those interactions, which could help us make drugs safer and more efficacious, and predict potential toxicities that may have been difficult to predict until now,” said Traverso, who is also a gastroenterologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
“Previous studies have identified several transporters in the GI tract that help drugs pass through the intestinal lining. Three of the most commonly used, which were the focus of the new study, are BCRP, MRP2, and PgP. For this study, Traverso and his colleagues adapted a tissue model they had developed in 2020 to measure a given drug’s absorbability. This experimental setup, based on pig intestinal tissue grown in the laboratory, can be used to systematically expose tissue to different drug formulations and measure how well they are absorbed. To study the role of individual transporters within the tissue, the researchers used short strands of RNA called siRNA to knock down the expression of each transporter. In each section of tissue, they knocked down different combinations of transporters, which enabled them to study how each transporter interacts with many different drugs.”
The publication explained that, to test their predictions, researchers “looked at data from about 50 patients who had been taking one of those three drugs when they were prescribed doxycycline,” which showed “that when doxycycline was given to patients already taking warfarin, the level of warfarin in the patients’ bloodstream went up, then went back down again after they stopped taking doxycycline.” It also “confirmed the model’s predictions that the absorption of doxycycline is affected by digoxin, levetiracetam, and tacrolimus,” according to MIT News.
“There are a few roads that drugs can take through tissue, but you don’t know which road. We can close the roads separately to figure out, if we close this road, does the drug still go through? If the answer is yes, then it’s not using that road,” Traverso told the publication.
“These are drugs that are commonly used, and we are the first to predict this interaction using this accelerated in silico and in vitro model,” Traverso continued. “This kind of approach gives you the ability to understand the potential safety implications of giving these drugs together.”
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Conservative actor Nick Searcy unloaded on Peter Beinart after the MSNBC analyst suggested that outrage over Ivy League presidents failing to condemn anti-Semitism on their campuses was an affront to free speech.
Several top university presidents took the banner of free speech and ran with it during a House committee meeting earlier this month, refusing to condemn calls for the genocide of Jews.
The presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) repeatedly offered excuses for the racist, often violent rants of left-wing students on campus.
“We embrace a commitment to free expression – even views that are objectionable, offensive [and] hateful,” said Harvard President Claudine Gay. “It’s when that speech crosses into conduct that violates our policies against bullying and harassment. That speech did not cross that barrier.”
Gay was responding to protesters on the campus calling for a “global intifada.”
NEW — Congresswoman Elise Stefanik demands Harvard’s President Claudine Gay resign in a fiery exchange over antisemitism on campus.
“Harvard ranks the lowest when it comes to protecting Jewish students,” Stefanik said.
At the time of this post being written, Penn President Liz Magill had resigned following her testimony before the committee, a move critics celebrated as a notch against ‘woke’ universities letting their students run the asylum.
There was pressure for Gay and MIT President Sally Kornbluth to follow suit.
But Beinart didn’t feel the Ivy League presidents should be criticized or have to suffer the consequences of their actions.
“The campaign to depose the presidents of Penn, Harvard + MIT is a campaign to restrict pro-Palestinian speech on campus,” he wrote on X. “If you support it, please have the decency never to sermonize about free speech, academic freedom or cancel culture again.”
The campaign to depose the presidents of Penn, Harvard + MIT is a campaign to restrict pro-Palestinian speech on campus. If you support it, please have the decency never to sermonize about free speech, academic freedom or cancel culture again.
Searcy, best known for his role on FX’s Justified, gently reminded Beinart that it is liberals in this country that set the guidelines for what speech is allowed and what gets you canceled.
“You made the rules about ‘hate speech,’ bitch,” he shot back. “Now you have to live by them. Tough titty.”
You made the rules about “hate speech,” bitch. Now you have to live by them. Tough titty.
— Nick Searcy, INSURRECTUMAL FILM & TELEVISION STAR (@yesnicksearcy) December 10, 2023
Searcy is a frequent critic of liberals on social media, often subscribing to the James Woods School of obliterating the left using their own tactics.
He shredded American Federation of Teachers (AFT) Randi Weingarten after she begged for a “pandemic amnesty” in which people would forgive and forget the actions taken by public officials and commenters during the COVID pandemic.
“This bish ruined more children’s lives than the Grinch,” he countered. “Of course, she agrees with having no consequences for her stupid lies.”
Beinart, meanwhile, likes to parrot anti-Semitic rants made by people like members of the ‘Squad.’ In an interview earlier this year, he cited sources denouncing Israel as an “apartheid state.”
Beinart seems to share a common cause with some Ivy League students.
Students that Leon Cooperman, an American billionaire investor and Columbia Business School graduate, recently described as being just shy of intelligent.
“I think these kids at the colleges have s*** for brains,” he said.
“We have one reliable ally in the Middle East, that’s Israel. We only have one democracy in the Middle East, that’s Israel. We have one economy tolerant of different people, you know, gays, lesbians, etc,” Cooperman said. “So, they have no idea what these young kids are doing.”
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Rusty Weiss has been covering politics for over 15 years. His writings have appeared in the Daily Caller, Fox News, Breitbart, and many more.
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Harvard has announced that Claudine Gay will be staying on as president of the university despite her disastrous testimony before Congress last week in which she claimed that calling for the genocide of Jews would only violate her school’s bullying and harassment policies “depending on the context.”
Harvard Board Stands By Gay
CNN reported that after deliberating on Monday night, the school’s board known as the Harvard Corporation decided to allow Gay, who has been touted as the school’s first black president, to keep her position despite widespread calls for her removal in the wake of her testimony.
“As members of the Harvard Corporation, we today reaffirm our support for President Gay’s continued leadership of Harvard University,” read a statement signed by all board members, with the exception of Gay. “Our extensive deliberations affirm our confidence that President Gay is the right leader to help our community heal and to address the very serious societal issues we are facing.”
“So many people have suffered tremendous damage and pain because of Hamas’s brutal terrorist attack, and the University’s initial statement should have been an immediate, direct, and unequivocal condemnation,” the board continued. “Calls for genocide are despicable and contrary to fundamental human values. President Gay has apologized for how she handled her congressional testimony and has committed to redoubling the University’s fight against antisemitism.”
I wonder what the response of #Claudine Gay, Harvard’s disgraceful President, would have been if asked about students calling for the lynching of black students instead of the genocide of Jewish ones? Would it need to be put in context? pic.twitter.com/oD7MkUZ0xX
— TXtwinmama 🟦 I Stand w/Israel🇮🇱 (@Txtwinmama) December 6, 2023
House GOP Conference Chair Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) has already fired back by blasting Harvard’s board for its “complete moral failure” in standing by Gay.
“There is a reason why the testimony at the Education Workforce Committee garnered 1 billion views worldwide, and it’s because those university presidents made history by putting the most morally bankrupt testimony into the Congressional Record, and the world saw it,” Stefanik said, according to Fox News. “As a Harvard graduate, I’m reminded of Harvard’s motto, Veritas, which goes back – and it’s older than the founding of our country, it goes back to the 1640s. In addition, the motto was Veritas Christo et Ecclesiae – Truth for Christ and the Church.”
“Larry Summers, who was president of Harvard when I was an undergrad, talked about the meaning of Veritas is divine truth, moral truth. Let me be clear. Veritas does not depend on the context,” Stefanik said. “This is a moral failure of Harvard’s leadership and higher education leadership at the highest levels, and the only change they have made to their code of conduct, where they failed to condemn calls for genocide of the Jewish people, the only update to the code of conduct is to allow a plagiarist as the president of Harvard.”
Veritas is divine truth, moral truth. Let me be clear, Veritas does not depend on the context. This is a moral failure of @Harvard’s leadership.
New York Democratic Rep. Daniel Goldman also blasted Harvard for keeping Gay on as president, arguing that the school is not doing enough to protect its students from the rise of antisemitism on college campuses.
“If they are unable to enforce their code of conduct, then they either need to get a new code of conduct or they need to get a new president,” Goldman said. “I hope there is a significant change at Harvard if Dr. Gay is going to stay.”
Liz Magill, who also testified before Congress last week, resigned as president of the University of Pennsylvania over the weekend after she received similar backlash to Gay.
“It has been my privilege to serve as President of this remarkable institution. It has been an honor to work with our faculty, students, staff, alumni, and community members to advance Penn’s vital missions,” Magill said in a brief statement, according to NPR.
“One down. Two to go,” Stefanik wrote on social media afterwards, referring to Gay and MIT President Sally Kornbluth. “In the case of @Harvard, President Gay was asked by me 17x whether calling for the genocide of Jews violates Harvard’s code of conduct. She spoke her truth 17x. And the world heard.”
One down. Two to go.
This is only the very beginning of addressing the pervasive rot of antisemitism that has destroyed the most “prestigious” higher education institutions in America.
This forced resignation of the President of @Penn is the bare minimum of what is required.…
Daily Mail reported that in the wake of Gay’s testimony, Harvard has lost a staggering $1 billion in donations. Gay’s school board may be standing by her, but she is facing an uphill battle when it comes to winning back the respect of many members of the Harvard community, given how many calls came in for her firing.
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