Harvard’s Hollow Motto

Veritas has been Harvard’s motto since 1643. The University has been hiding behind it ever since.

Harvard’s motto of veritas — Latin for truth — is its most defining image. Harvard continually reaffirms its commitment to truth in writing and on the shield representing the University on campus and across the globe. Harvard College Dean David J. Deming has said veritas represents the University’s commitment to “pursuing knowledge and serving the common good.” The motto is intended to serve as Harvard’s north star.

Standard critiques of the University often take the pursuit of veritas at face value, labeling Harvard a hypocrite when the school’s actions seem at odds with its professed values. When most make this criticism, they take the motto to be a sincere commitment that the University has failed to uphold.

But under close analysis, Harvard’s systemic failures to uphold veritas stem from the University’s broader structure, rendering it unable to hold itself accountable to the fullest extent.

At the lowest level, the University passes a basic truth test. Undergraduate students who are caught committing an act of academic dishonesty must face the Honor Council, a codified process with institutionalized procedures and consequences. At the undergraduate academic level, veritas holds legitimacy.

Yet, as you move up the chain of command of Harvard’s hierarchy, the hazier truth becomes. Recently, a working group within the Council for Academic Freedom at Harvard pressed the administration to reform how it investigates its faculty, arguing that the current procedure lacks basic transparency, consistency, and due process. Meanwhile, the institution holds undergraduates to a clearer standard of honesty and truth.

Veritas grows ambiguous proportional to the power of the person — or institution — it is applied to. Unlike the standards it enforces around academic honesty, the University appears to subject itself to internal investigation only when external pressure leaves no alternative.

The University’s reliance on its endowment, its reputation, and its donor base determines when veritas is invoked and when it is not. In order to balance the books, Harvard’s public image must be pristine enough that donors won’t shy away. Harvard’s prestige must not be dulled in order to continue attracting talented students and academics. What appears to be upholding principles is on closer examination calculation, deliberate or not.

Thus Harvard’s structure and financial imperatives have allowed truth-seeking to become a cost-benefit analysis. Truth-seeking occurs when it reinforces the institution’s interests and disappears when it unsettles them.

Consider the original report on Harvard’s ties to Epstein released in 2020. Suppose no media outlet had decided to pursue the story regarding Harvard’s deeper ties to Epstein. Would the extent of Harvard’s relationship with Epstein — including his office space and the more than 40 visits he made to Harvard after his 2008 conviction — have come to light? The initial report did not even explicitly mention his $25,000 gift for women’s athletics, with a preference for rugby, or the 47 contact reports in Harvard’s development database recording interactions between the University and Epstein from 1992 to 2018.

The relationship between Epstein and Harvard was established and persisted before Harvard’s report was published. Professors and faculty received donations and benefits from associating with Epstein before Harvard’s ties with Epstein became known to the public. The facts about the University’s conduct already existed before the public was made aware of them.

Truth did not require outside attention to exist: it had always existed. It appears Harvard required outside critique to seek out the truth; veritas was ostensibly forced upon the University.

Harvard has the capacity to examine itself in relation to its stated principles, but its entrenched operational constraints disable veritas from fully shaping the University’s operations. Harvard has often taken measures to respond to crises wherever its structure mandates it, whether it be to protect the Harvard name or maintain its financial standing. Action is not taken solely due to veritas.

The institution will not — and cannot — reform itself from within to be faithful to veritas. The burden falls to those outside it. Hold Harvard to its own word: take the motto of veritas at its fullest, and hold it against the University’s actual structure.

Harvard has an Honor Council for its students. It has no comparable body for itself. That responsibility instead falls to students, faculty, and even the broader public. The contradictions the University cannot see in itself are visible from where we are standing. Name them. Refuse to look past them.

The motto belongs to Harvard, but the work to uphold it belongs to us.

Victoria Konopka ’28, a Crimson Editorial editor, is a double concentrator in Social Studies and Economics in Eliot House.