Lee, Colleagues Demand Answers from Brown University on Failure to Prevent On-Campus Killings

Lee, Colleagues Demand Answers from Brown University on Failure to Prevent On-Campus Killings May 14, 2026 WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Mike Lee (R-UT), along with a coalition of his colleagues in the House and Senate, demanded answers from Brown University regarding the school's shocking negligence resulting in a recent on-campus killing. The university sacrificed safety equipment to pacify woke ideologues and adopted a blatantly anti-police posture, leaving students hopelessly vulnerable to an on-campus attack that killed two students and injured nine – all while Brown’s alert system lagged for a stunning and deadly seventeen minutes. “Brown University abandoned its students, choosing to virtue signal rather than protect them from being killed on their own campus,” said Senator Mike Lee. “In the last five years alone, Brown University has ignored attack threats, undermined their own campus police force, and apologized for using security cameras when woke activists called them a ‘tool of oppression’ – all while dorms were broken into and robbed year after year. This is shockingly ridiculous and abhorrently negligent. The tragic on-campus killings in December may have been averted had Brown not chosen optics over their students’ safety. I demand answers and accountability for these victims and their families.” Senators Katie Britt (R-AL), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) and Representatives Elise Stefanik (R-NY), Robert Aderholt (R-AL), Mike Lawler (R-NY), Barry Moore (R-AL), Mike Rogers (R-AL), Dale Strong (R-AL), and Gary Palmer (R-AL) are the letter’s additional signees. “We write as concerned Members of the United States Congress to express profound outrage and demand accountability for the tragic and preventable murders that occurred on the Brown University campus on December 13, 2025. The deaths of Ella Cook, Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, and the wounding of nine others were not unforeseeable tragedies. Public reporting, sworn testimony, police union statements, Brown’s public records, and the assailant’s own words clearly establish that these deaths were made possible by more than a decade of deliberate policy decisions that prioritized activists’ radical demands over student safety,” wrote the members of Congress. The members of Congress go on to recount Brown University’s consistent caving to far-left, anti-law enforcement activists, putting the safety and security of their students at risk, noting the following: “After more than a decade of poor choices, Brown leadership’s decisions left its campus and students vulnerable on December 13, 2025. The University had only five officers on duty, a system of non-functional or unstaffed security cameras, and ignored multiple warnings from campus employees about the assailant. These alarming failures, compounded by an incomprehensible 17-minute delay in activating the BrownAlert system, allowed the assailant to fire off 44 unchallenged shots – killing two innocent students and injuring nine others. Brown’s mistakes were not isolated lapses; they were the predictable outcome of an institutional culture so corroded that it treated legitimate law enforcement and physical security as ideological threats rather than essential protections.” Read exclusive coverage by The Free Press here . Read the full text of the letter here . ###