Roberto Serrano has been teaching economics at Brown University for 34 years. The past year was the hardest — both tragic and dismaying. In December, a man walked into a classroom and opened fire, killing and injuring 11 students. Two of the victims were Serrano’s students. In March, he gave the midterm exam in his ECON 1170 course, and the grade distribution strongly suggested that many students had cheated by having AI solve the problems. The final exam, administered in May, erased any doubt.
A massive cheating scandal is bad enough. The anemic response of Brown administrators, Serrano feels, made matters worse. After weeks of frustration at the inaction of the university, Serrano went public in late June in the Spanish newspaper El País. He’s since received hundreds of emails — most encouraging, many in solidarity, one declaring him the “king of idiots” for giving a take-home exam in 2026.
I spoke with Serrano, a renowned game theorist, about that decision, whether colleges are too lenient about enforcing academic integrity, and going blind at the age of 17.
