STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Now we turn, as we sometimes do, to Juliette Kayyem, who's faculty chair of the Homeland Security Project at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. Good morning.
JULIETTE KAYYEM: Good morning.
INSKEEP: What do you think about when a person of interest is detained and then released, as happened here?
KAYYEM: Well, it's not uncommon for there to be a sort of detention as a person of interest. What was uncommon as the day unfolded yesterday was that nothing seemed to be progressing. They had gotten him in the early mornings of Sunday. And, you know, look, this investigation is under the spotlight, so everyone is going to assume a person of interest ends up being the suspect or the shooter. And that didn't happen here. When I - I watched the news conference last night, where they said he was being released. And while, you know, they're back on a manhunt, I have to be honest with you. From the evidence that has at least been made public - no good picture of him, no identification, no one seems to be coming forward saying, I might know this person - it's not even a manhunt yet. I think they're still trying to even figure out the race and identity of who it was that walked into that room.
INSKEEP: You may be answering my question then.
KAYYEM: Yeah.
INSKEEP: But I was sitting here wondering - what, if anything, do they have to go on here?
KAYYEM: It's - I think that I answer that question with how surprising it is. It seems that they have very little. What - you know, look, I know Brown University. I'm - my daughter is an alum. I'm in Rhode Island now. We - I spend a lot of time here. I know the community. There are video cameras everywhere around that university.
What was odd about and horrible about the shooting is, of course, it takes place on a Saturday in December. Anyone who's at a university knows it's pretty quiet, and the shooter finds a room where there's lots of people. They were there for a review session for one of the most popular classes at Brown. I actually know the faculty member who teaches that class. And there's no pictures of him in the room or leaving. He seems to have just sort of, you know, left like a ghost. And without an identification that can narrow it down, they're really stuck with sort of ballistic information, trying to - you know, trying to figure out if the bullets lead to anyone or if someone comes forward from a very grainy picture that they allege is the killer, but it's all from the back. So unless you know the person's gait, you're not going to come forward and say, I know who that person is.
INSKEEP: Having been connected to Brown in...
KAYYEM: Yeah.
INSKEEP: ...The way that you mentioned, you must be hearing things from the broader Brown community, from other parents and so forth.
KAYYEM: Yeah. I mean, it's - this was a weird one. I mean, I - this is going to sound weird and horrible, maybe, to listeners. But people like me who help the media on TV or radio or writing, we have what we call - what's - the dead person beat. That sounds horrible and heartless. It's not meant to be. It's just a sort of sarcasm that people like me have because of the unrelenting nature of violence and terrorism and Homeland Security threats that occur. And most of them are very distant to me.
So I'll get a phone call - you know, can you get on air? Can you write something? - when something bad happens. The first phone call I got for this one was my daughter, who was getting text from people who she knew who were still on campus - she had graduated - about the lockdown. I then go into, I-have-to-verify-this mode. And so I'm getting lots just incoming, many of it not accurate because 20-year-olds will hear things that are not accurate, but...
INSKEEP: Yeah.
KAYYEM: ...Certainly showed me how that sort of disinformation, the sort of - the stuff, the incoming often is wrong. So it felt intimate in terms of how I know the community, how I know the campus. I know all the key players in law enforcement here. And a - yeah. And close, honestly.
INSKEEP: Can you just talk to me for a moment as a parent here as well? We...
KAYYEM: Yeah.
INSKEEP: ...Heard a student say, this is my second shooting.
KAYYEM: Yeah.
INSKEEP: And there are parents across this country whose kids have gone through decades at this point, possibly, of active shooter drills and preparations for this moment.
KAYYEM: Yeah. You know, it's this - I'm going to answer first as a subject matter expert, which is I tend to try not to be too emotional about it because there's enough emotion out there, and I just try to make the unimaginable more understandable to people and my students. And - but this one - I mean, not only was it close to home, but, you know, I have three kids who went through junior high and high school with, you know, basically a decade of experience of active shooter drills until they got to college. Colleges now have alert systems, and universities have alert systems. So, you know, I'm familiar with it.
I'm mad. I don't show that madness all the time or anger all the time. And - but it - I think this weekend sort of reminded someone like me that - you know, because this was close to me, it felt more intimate. And we have to feel like every one of these is intimate to us 'cause they - it happens to all of our kids. Our kids are watching this. They're going to school. They see what's happening. And so we have to remember that we're all part of these communities as they get disrupted by this gun violence.
INSKEEP: Juliette Kayyem of Harvard. Thanks, as always.
KAYYEM: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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