SINCE 1891
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD FRIDAY, MARCH 6
VOLUME CLXI, ISSUE 7 BROWNDAILYHERALD.COM
R.I. Attorney General releases report detailing decades of abuse in Diocese of Providence According to the report, the most recent disclosed instance of sexual misconduct was in 2011. The report counts nine victims of sexual abuse between 2000 and 2019.
75 clergy members were credibly accused of child sexual abuse BY TALIA EGNAL METRO EDITOR R.I. Attorney General Peter Neronha P’19 P’22 released a nearly 300-page report de-
tailing over seven decades of Rhode Island clergy members sexually abusing minors — and how the Diocese of Providence allegedly covered up the widespread abuse. The report, which took almost seven years to produce, found 75 clergy members with credible accusations of sexual misconduct and over 300 documented victims of sex abuse at the hands of clergy members
since 1950. Four of the named clergy members have faced criminal charges. “Child sexual abuse in the Diocese of Providence occurred on an abhorrent, staggering scale,” Neronha said in a press release emailed to The Herald. He accused the Diocese of Providence of “protecting the reputation of the Church and its priests over the welfare of children.”
The diocese acknowledged “serious missteps” by church leadership “generally in the early recognition and handling of this awful period” in a statement shared with The Herald. The report states that clergy often targeted “especially vulnerable” children, including kids who came from troubled homes, altar boys and those attending
MIA SANTOMASSIMO / HERALD
Catholic schools. The majority of cases were perpetrated against children between the ages of 11 and 14, and there was a fiveto-one ratio of male to female victims, the report found. Incidents peaked in the 1960s and ’70s, and victims took an average of 26 years to report their experiences.
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UNIVERSITY NEWS
UNIVERSITY NEWS
Hegseth orders cancellation of attendance for troops in Brown graduate programs
Faculty vote to replace Paxson as faculty meeting chair
The announcement follows a similar cancellation at Harvard earlier this month
The chair of the Faculty Executive Committee will become the meeting’s leader
BY IAN RITTER UNIVERSITY NEWS AND SCIENCE & RESEARCH EDITOR The Pentagon will cancel all attendance for Department of Defense troops in graduate programs at Brown and other Ivy League institutions starting in the 2026–27 academic year, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced in a video on X on Friday. “For decades, the Ivy League and similar institutions have gorged themselves on a trust fund of American taxpayer dollars, only to become factories of anti-American resentment and military disdain,” he said.
Marriage Pact
The University will see cancellations for four military students, according to a Pentagon memo outlining the order. In the video, Hegseth accused the Ivy League of “toxic indoctrination” and perpetuating “wokeness and weakness.” “They’ve traded true intellectual rigor for radical dogma, sacrificing free expression for the suffocating confines of leftist ideology,” he added. Hegseth earned degrees at both Princeton and Harvard. The order cancels enrollment for a total of 93 military students across 22 institutions, according to the memo, and proposes 21 institutions as new potential partners for military education. The memo also outlines criteria met by the proposed partners,
SEE MILITARY PAGE 3
SEE MARIAGE PACT PAGE 16
BY SEYLA FERNANDEZ SENIOR STAFF WRITER At Tuesday’s meeting, faculty members narrowly passed a motion to replace President Christina Paxson P’19 P’MD’20 as the chair of the University’s monthly faculty meeting. The chair of the Faculty Executive Committee — Brown’s central faculty governance body — will replace Paxson as the meeting’s leader. With a three-vote margin, 75 of the meeting attendees voted in favor of the motion, 72 voted against it and 21 abstained from voting. “It will feel different,” said J. Timmons Roberts, a professor of environmental studies, so-
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ciology and environment and society. “I think it might be quite a refreshing change to see who will participate in the meetings." Nancy Khalek, an associate professor of religious studies and history, shared that when she’s participated in faculty meetings in the past, she’s received multiple emails from other faculty members thanking her for speaking because they “didn’t feel like (they) could talk.” “I think that’s a problem,” she said. “My colleagues should not be afraid to speak freely at meetings.” The proposed motion also included a clause stating that “the FEC should ensure that the conditions are created at faculty meetings for robust discussion and that agenda items pertain to mat-
SEE FACULTY PAGE 2
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