Air Travel Ban Strands Students, Faculty

Ramifications of Tuesday’s tragic attacks continued to be felt on campus yesterday, with faculty and students unable to return to Harvard because of continued widespread airport closings.

Logan International Airport remained closed yesterday and six members of the physics department were trapped in cities from San Francisco to Dusseldorf—resulting in the cancellation of the semester’s first physics classes.

Students who set their alarms early to attend Physics 1a at 8:30 yesterday morning found the doors to Science Center B closed, with Professor of Physics David A. Weitz searching for a return route from France.

Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics Roy J. Glauber planned to fly from Dusseldorf, Germany to Boston Tuesday in time to interview for Freshman Seminar 30, “Science and Technology,” on Wednesday, but has been trapped at London’s Heathrow Airport instead.

Gerard F. Denault, associate director of the Freshman Seminar Program, said his office has told students interested in the class to “hold on” until Glauber returns. He said add/drop fees will be waved for students who sign up late for the class.

Denault also filled in Wednesday for the first hour of the informational session on Freshman Seminar 17, “Public Policy Approaches to Global Climate Changes,” as Boas Professor of International Economics Richard N. Cooper arrived late from Washington, D.C.

“I was at a meeting in Washington and I was supposed to fly back Tuesday,” Cooper said. “Instead I rode a train in the afternoon and got to class half way through.”

Four other physics faculty members are watching the news and struggling to find flights home from cities in California.

“We’re doing a lot of scrambling here to make sure our classes are covered,” Gerald B.S. Gabrielse, physics department head, said last night. “We’ve received a lot of panicked messages from professors.”

Shira S. Simon ’04, who found her Physics 1a class cancelled this morning, said the change in schedule gave her time, in her “early-morning groggy feeling,” to consider the wide-ranging effects of Tuesday’s attacks.

“You don’t realize the residual impact, how people still can’t commute anywhere. Things just aren’t normal,” Simon said. “It was a relief that I didn’t have a physics class, but at the same time there’s a lot more to the situation.”

Within the general education department, Morris Professor of Health Care Policy Richard G. Frank could not attend the first meeting of General Education 186, “Introduction to Health Care,” yesterday. Denault said Frank is in San Francisco and graduate students distributed course syllabi to interested students.

A number of students reported that General Education 105, “The Literature of Social Reflection,” also unexpectedly failed to meet yesterday, but Denault said Agee Professor of Social Ethics Robert Coles ’50, who teaches the class, had previously planned to wait until next week before holding his first session. Denault said he did not know whether Coles was in town or not.

Two members of the Near Eastern languages and civilizations department were also caught abroad as of yesterday.

Susan G. Miller, senior lecturer on Islamic civilizations, was trapped in Turkey and could not attend yesterday’s first scheduled lecture for Islamic Civilizations 120, “The Arab Mediterranean City.”

Meyer Professor of Middle East History E. Roger Owen was already flying from Europe toward Boston when his flight was diverted to Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he has remained since Tuesday.

“Students might not know how to deal with this,” said Ahmed Jebari, a staff assistant in department. “Students are shopping, and if they don’t know the professors, they might not take the class.”

A number of travelling students hoping to return to campus for registration Tuesday were also forced to alter their plans.

Last night at about 8:30 p.m., Samuel Graham-Felsen ’04 sat on a cruise ship traveling from a port near Halifax, Nova Scotia, expecting to return to school early this morning.

Graham-Felsen spent last weekend in Paris and boarded a plane traveling back to Boston on Tuesday. About halfway into the flight, the pilot announced that the plane would have to land in Halifax because of “some kind of terrorism,” Graham-Felsen said.

“I just assumed there was some bomb threat at the airport or something,” he said.

But when the airplane landed in a sea of planes lined up at the Halifax airport, Graham-Felsen said he decided to call his roommate, Justin A. Erlich ’03.

“I told him I was stranded in Canada and asked what was going on,” Graham-Felsen said. “When I heard, I was like, ‘Oh my God, oh my God!’”

His fellow passengers began crowding around him and Graham-Felsen told them the horrific news--that four passenger jets had been hijacked, striking the Pentagon and turning the World Trade Center’s twin towers to rubble.

“It was just horrible, having to bear that news. It was just surreal,” Graham-Felsen said. “It was like a movie. I kept waiting for Steven Seagall to appear or something.”

Ten hours later, after a few French passengers had been arrested for smoking on the plane, Graham-Felsen said he was transported to a Canadian army base and assigned a cot.

He said he was amazed by the kindness of those around him at the military base.

“It could have been really awful...but it wasn’t,” he said. “They had a ping pong table. I had a bed and the food was better than Annenberg, actually.”

But following a day at the army base, Graham-Felsen said he decided to head home, renting a car to drive him to the nearest port, where he boarded what he said appeared to be a cruise for senior citizens.

“I’ve been on this boat for like 10 hours now,” Graham-Felsen said last night. “These have just been some of the most surreal days of my life.”

—Staff writer Alex B. Ginsberg can be reached at ginsberg@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Daniela J. Lamas can be reached at lamas@fas.harvard.edu.