“I said, ‘You and I are going to be talking a lot this year,’” he told the Faculty at their April meeting.

They have.

In the year and a half since the terrorist attacks, Ladd and Casey have worked together closely to help ensure that national security legislation aimed at keeping out terrorists doesn’t also keep out Harvard students and professors.

This year, more than a dozen foreign students experienced significant delays in getting their visas—and some never made it to Harvard.

Adrian Ow Yung Hwei, a student from Malaysia slated to enter Harvard with the Class of 2006 last fall, expected to receive his visa within a matter of weeks.

Instead, he had to wait three and a half months.

While Hwei was awaiting his visa’s arrival, the Malaysian government—which is funding his education—considered sending him to Australia or New Zealand.

“As one of my friends jocularly noted, ‘down under, and not just geographically,’” Hwei wrote in an e-mail this fall.

But when the visa arrived at last, the Malaysian government decided to allow Hwei to enter Harvard after all—this time with the Class of 2007.

Hwei attributes his unwanted delay to governmental restrictions. Harvard’s hands seemed bound, he explains.

“I’m not sure what more the HIO could have done,” he says.

Ladd says that the HIO was not in any position to act against the government’s new measures.

“We’ve never felt that we’ve had any choice but to meet these requirements,” she says.

And visa delays were far from the only problem on the HIO’s hands.

The Patriot Act also mandated that all institutions of higher education register their international students in a single, national database known as SEVIS.