NEW: Brown Committee Releases Initial Report on Ray Kelly Lecture

NEW: Brown Committee Releases Initial Report on Ray Kelly Lecture

The Brown Committee charged by President Christina Paxson to investigate the circumstances leading to the disruption of a lecture by former New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly on campus last fall released its initial report this week. 

Read the committee's full report here

The committee, composed of five faculty members, two administrators, two undergraduates and one graduate student, met with participants on all sides of the controversy. 

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The report finds that the lecture was cancelled by administrators because of concerns that Department of Public Safety officers would not be able to address conflict with protestors from outside of the Brown community. Kelly himself, according to the report, said at the time, "“I want to make this clear that you’re cancelling this event...I’m willing to speak."

The report indicates that those who planned the talk did not initially expect the maelstrom that would surround Kelly's speech. The committee found that the event title and description provided by Kelly and his staff aroused neither "any reaction or discussion…before adoption." In the week before the lecture, students delivered a petition with signatures from about 300 students, as well as alumni and community members." The report also found that student's feelings were inflamed by the University's decision the week previous to refuse to divest from its stake in coal.

The committee will release the second part of its findings and recommendations before the end of the semester, said its head, Professor of Africana Studies Anthony Bogues