Harvard’s Avi Loeb Tapped to Lead Trump’s UFO Advisory Council

The council, reporting to a UAP panel established by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, operates as part of a broader mandate to increase transparency surrounding military encounters with unexplained orbs. Loeb, who spent a decade as chair of Harvard’s astronomy department, has assembled a team of over a dozen scientists and activists, including retired Rear Admiral Timothy Gallaudet and entrepreneur Ben Lamm. The group has already petitioned the Pentagon for access to more than 50 classified videos and documents.

Loeb’s involvement has ignited friction within the scientific community. Critics, including Arizona State University astrophysicist Steve Desch, argue that Loeb’s tendency to bypass peer review and his penchant for exotic, alien-focused explanations undermine the rigor required for national security analysis. Sean Kirkpatrick, formerly of the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, echoed these concerns, suggesting the administration is prioritizing fringe narratives over established methodology. Despite the skepticism, Loeb maintains he is approaching the work through a grounded, security-focused lens, starting with the assumption that the phenomena are human-made while aiming to use the government’s data-gathering capabilities to finally address the question of extraterrestrial intelligence.