And Watch Out for Commies!

Before I headed up to Harvard my freshman year, I received lots of advice from many different people. Some of it was helpful, some of it was not and some of it was just plain weird.

I received a letter from a friend of my mother's. I had never met this woman, a college classmate of my mother's back in the Philippines. All she knew about me was that I was going to be a student at Harvard.

"Be very careful when you go up to Harvard," her letter began. That's reasonable advice, I thought to myself; Boston does have its problems with crime. I didn't realize that she wasn't talking about Cambridge criminals, but about Harvard professors and students.

"Beware of the false teachings, the immorality and the irreligion that Harvard will attempt to feed you," the letter continued. "If they feed you this poison, spit it out!"

I had several questions in my mind after finishing this short letter. First, who was this woman? Probably some crazy fundamentalist, a paranoid and overly religious Filipino woman who knew nothing of exalted educational institutions like Harvard.

My next question was equally patronizing and arrogant, typical of a Harvard mind. Was this lady crazy? Didn't she understand that Harvard is the very paragon of enlightenment? She needed to get a grip on reality. Harvard teaches math, political science, physics, English. Its students and teachers are the best thinkers and human beings around.

Where did all this mumbo-jumbo about "false teachings" come from? I could see it now: Immorality 10a. An introduction to corruption, crime, debauchery, avarice and murder. Readings from "gangsta rap" lyrics, the Marquis de Sade, Adolf Hitler, required of concentrators.

Given my stature as a sophisticated Harvard student, I decided to forgive this woman for her ignorance and pay no heed to her provincial warning. I showed the letter to my mother, who also believed Harvard could do no wrong, and we shared a laugh over it.

It's been more than two years since I read that letter, and I've learned a great deal in the interim. Although its wording was alarmist and a bit extreme, I've discovered through my own experience that the letter was by and large correct in its assessment of Harvard.

In so many ways, Harvard professors and students work together to spread their liberal propaganda. First-years capable of thinking for themselves are the raw materials that are fed into the Harvard factory. Inside the building, professors and students work like assembly line workers.

What goes on inside the factory is a complicated process with many steps. If you arrive on campus with religious faith, it will be surgically removed. The traditional values that your families worked so hard to instill in you will be excised as easily as your tonsils.

I don't want the Liberal Machine to claim any more victims. And so I have taken it upon myself to warn you, just as my mother's friend took it upon herself to warn me.

I'd like to destroy three myths about education and learning that Harvard puts into the minds of its students. If you know that these supposed truths are merely myths, you may still have a fighting chance when the liberals lift you up and put you on the conveyor belt that leads into their factory. You may still emerge from Harvard with your conscience intact.

Myth 1: Teaching is not a political process.

Nothing could be more untrue on this campus, because at Harvard, teaching is inherently political.

Certainly your understanding of quantum mechanics won't be affected by your religious or political views. But in so many subjects, from Government to English to Biology, professors will have the chance to pass off their own liberal opinions as fact, as part of the essential knowledge within a discipline.

Professors have become adept at blending objective and subjective statements until students can't tell which is which. At Harvard, where respect for professors becomes transformed into a kind of hero worship, students eagerly accept professorial pronouncements as the new Gospel.

I generally hold nothing but contempt for Harvard liberals, but I'd like to grudgingly praise them for their recognition that what we teach in our schools is in fact a political question. What I hate is their crass politicization of the whole process of learning. Another day, another editorial.

Myth 2: Harvard teaches you how to think, and not what to think.

Although this is patently untrue, Harvard students will encounter this falsehood at every turn of their undergraduate careers. Harvard teachers and administrators like to emphasize the process of scholarship and reasoning, saying that professors teach students how to research and how to construct an argument.

The problem with this myth is that the best teaching is done by example. Harvard professors teach us how to think by sharing their own thought processes. Students eager to learn (and get good grades) adopt not just the thought processes, but the conclusions, of their professors. Who can blame them? They have little choice in the matter. There's nobody around to show them that these same tools of rational discourse and assiduous research can yield entirely different results.

Myth 3: Harvard is a veritable Garden of Diversity, through which young Adams and Eves can romp in diverse ways, playing with many diverse animals and eating diversely delicious foods.

This myth is sort of like a Crimson "Inside the Houses" article, writ large to apply to all of Harvard. But Harvard doesn't nurture diversity; it destroys it. Of course, Harvard has all the trappings of superficial diversity--people of different skin colors, sexual orientations, national and state origins. But it lays siege to the most important diversity of all: diversity of opinion.

"Peer pressure liberalism" forces conservatives to give up their opinions in order to make friends and fit in. Pressure from one's fellow students to toe the party line can be even more effective than the indoctrination carried out by the professors.

Quite simply, it's just easier to be a liberal at Harvard. As a first-year, you'll find yourself in unfamiliar surroundings, anxious about your academic future and your social life. Being conservative is just another thing to worry about, another hurdle to jump. Most people will say that it's not worth the trouble. But fighting for what you believe in is always worth the trouble.

You may have the same reaction to this editorial that I had to the strange letter from my mother's friend. But if you haven't been filled with the liberal platitudes, if you're still capable of thinking for yourself at the end of your Harvard experience, you will understand that I wasn't a crazy, paranoid fundamentalist.

You'll just realize that I was right.

David B. Lat '96 is well-loved by the members of AFARM.