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Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 traveled across the pond earlier this week for an unannounced trip to London, where he met with the University’s Rhodes Scholars and senior University of Oxford officials.
Garber — accompanied by his wife Anne Yahanda, Harvard Alumni Association Executive Director Sarah Karmon, and Harvard Vice President for Public Affairs and Communications Paul Andrew — spent several days in the United Kingdom. During a reception at Oxford with Harvard Rhodes Scholars, Garber said Harvard’s fight with the Trump administration is ongoing, according to one attendee.
During the reception, which drew more than a dozen students and several Rhodes House officials, Garber also suggested that tensions over federal funding and restrictions on international students continue to loom over the University.
He then told the Rhodes Scholars that four international students admitted to Harvard College were ultimately unable to enroll, according to the person. He said three were blocked by the blanket travel bans imposed under the Trump administration, appearing to suggest that the fourth was affected by Harvard’s own disputes with Washington.
A Harvard spokesperson declined to comment on the trip.
The Trump administration has since May sought to bar Harvard from hosting international students — first by moving to revoke the University’s authorization to enroll them, and later by announcing a blanket suspension on student travel to the United States.
Both measures were blocked by a federal judge, though several international students reported experiencing visa delays and other obstacles over the summer.
Garber said that in the immediate aftermath of the Trump administration’s actions, officials from several universities — including Oxford — reached out to Harvard to offer support, though he did not say if Oxford had offered to host students if Harvard was unable to secure an injunction against the policy, the person said.
Multiple universities were in talks with Harvard over the summer to host international students if they were unable to return to Cambridge. The Harvard Kennedy School partnered with the University of Toronto to provide temporary placements — an option a small cohort of international students ultimately accepted.
Since April, the White House has hit Harvard with successive rounds of funding freezes totaling $2.7 billion — effectively halting nearly all federal grants and contracts awarded to the University. The blocked funds were reinstated following a court ruling in September, and money has begun to flow back to Harvard gradually in the weeks since.
The hour-long event was largely informal. Garber spent most of the reception mingling with students, taking photos, and sharing light food before giving brief remarks for about five minutes. In smaller group conversations, he discussed his personal interest in economics and reminisced about his time as an undergraduate in Dunster House, the person said.
The visit comes a little more than one year after Garber last traveled to London, where he met with hundreds of alumni during a trip that included stops in the United Kingdom and Florida. In that trip, he spoke at an off-the-record event hosted by the Harvard Club of the United Kingdom, before meeting with officials and Harvard students at the University of Cambridge.
The unannounced London trip also marks Garber’s second reported international travel since assuming the top post in January 2024 — and his first of the year. He had planned to visit India over spring break but abruptly canceled the trip after Columbia University was hit with a $400 million federal funding cut, a move that some in Massachusetts Hall interpreted as a warning shot from Washington.
—Staff writer Dhruv T. Patel can be reached at dhruv.patel@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @dhruvtkpatel.
—Staff writer Saketh Sundar can be reached at saketh.sundar@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @saketh_sundar.
