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By Michele Deramo In the aftermath of the December 2025 shootings of the Brown University students and the MIT physics professor, Nuno FG Loureiro, former colleagues and classmates of the alleged shooter grappled to find answers.  Photo by Christopher Capozziello for The New York Times The suspected gunman, Cláudio Valente, and Loureiro, both graduated in 2000 from the University of Lisbon (Técnico), an institution widely known both for its prestige and its hyper-competitive atmosphere where students who struggled were routinely humiliated. Valente was remembered as a brilliant student who thrived in the competitive environment of the Técnico and was helpful to fellow students. He graduated at the top of his class with an unusually high score and went on to pursue a Ph.D. in Physics at Brown University.
But his tenure at Brown was short-lived. Valente dropped out after a few months. Classmates there recalled that he was often unhappy, sometimes bullying, and vocally impatient with a course of study that he thought was too easy. We can only speculate about what caused Valente to abandon his academic plans, isolate himself from family and colleagues, and eventually take his own life in a storage unit. The recordings he left behind provided no coherent insight. He refused to acknowledge or seek treatment for mental health issues. He estranged himself from the people who loved and cared for him. He ruminated over resentments and grievances, possibly connected to the loss of identity associated with his early academic success. Easy access to firearms facilitated the deadly resolution of these ruminations. It is hard to accept that we can never know for sure. But there are clues that we can reflect upon and learn from. The Técnico was cited by former classmates as an emotionally grueling academic environment—and Valente may have been harmed as a result. But Valente appeared to have mastered the Técnico. Could it be that his record of achievement caused him to feel entitled to more than he received? Especially when he compared himself to colleagues such as Loureiro who did well at Técnico — but not as well as Valente—and went on to become a celebrated physicist at MIT? In 2018 Loureiro gave a speech in which he stated that “If you’re not failing all the time, you’re aiming too low.” Loureiro’s stance toward failing was in sharp contrast to that of Valente, who severed himself from the communities that gave his life meaning. Of course, there is more about Valente’s story. But those of us in the Compassionate STEM community are offered an insight: Academic learning environments that weaponize failure to humiliate and exclude are bound to harm. Academic learning environments that treat failure as invitations for continued effort and inquiry will generate growth and discovery. Two alumni from the same university and degree programs whose trajectories diverged and then converged in a tragedy. What do we do? First, we mourn. We mourn that even our best efforts may not prevent another tragedy, that the complexities of any individual life are mystery, unsolvable by a single intervention. Then, we choose. We choose to nonetheless do what we can within our spheres of our influence to create environments of care, recovery, and growth. We choose to believe in the power of compassion—even when the prevailing discourse urges us to do otherwise-- and continually seek to enact compassion in ways both ordinary and extraordinary. Listen to Nuno Loureiro | On Failure (9.35 minutes) Comments are closed.
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