“I got very frantic at the end of September. I was bombarding [the consulate] with almost daily letters and faxes,” el-Gaili says. “Life sort of normalized when I realized, ‘I’m not going back to Harvard.’”

The Law School granted el-Gaili a special, last-minute “hardship out,” so he could take classes in London, where he spent the end of the summer, and still graduate with his class in June.

El-Gaili credits several Law School administrators and professors with hearing his case and helping him find a London school.

But he says he’s perplexed that University President Lawrence H. Summers—“with the political weight of a former member of the cabinet”—wasn’t able to successfully lobby on behalf of el-Gaili and other students.

More broadly, el-Gaili says he has definitely decided to work in London, not New York, after graduation, due to the extreme difficulty he faced in trying to get a visa.

El-Gaili says he thinks the visa problems are reflective of a wider backlash faced by Arabs and Arab-Americans in the U.S.

“I think it’s detrimental to us and to the long-term interests of America itself,” el-Gaili says.

Unexpected Wait

On Monday, would-be Harvard Business School first-year and Jordan resident Mohamad Al-Ississ ’00 said he still has yet to receive his visa—even though he made his application four months ago.

Al-Ississ, who has deferred entering the Business School until next year, echoes el-Gaili’s concerns that Harvard’s top administrators have not done enough to push for students.

Professors, too, are not immune to new, unexpectedly long delays.

Visiting Lecturer in Visual and Environmental Studies (VES) Mark Nash, a U.K. resident, waited six weeks to receive a visa to come teach at Harvard—a process which used to take just a few days, he says.

While Nash, who is currently teaching VES 186, “Cinema, Art & The Location of Culture,” says he knew that visas for people from developing countries would take longer, he thought that he would would be fine.

“The U.K. is not an underdeveloped country,” he says.

The new paperwork asked about religious affiliation and experience with nuclear and biological material, he says, and had a special section just for men under 40.