As a crossroads of elitism, intellect, and tourism, Harvard Square affords a truther the opportunity to inject truth "directo a la vena" or straight to the vein, of the power elite and their groupies. Often incorrectly described as ultra-liberal (the Kremlin on the Charles) the Harvard community is in fact a mish mosh of generally acquiescent would-be ladder climbers from any and all acceptable mainstream political currents. Behind the ivy laced brick veneer, a battle rages for the heart and soul of Harvard--will it focus on teaching or the more lucrative research that brings in $400 million a year in federal funds? Does raising money trump integrity, as when Harvard recently accepted a $10 million gift from the co-founder of the Carlyle Group? Can prestige co-exist with the disgrace of looters like Prof. Andrei Schleifer who retains his teaching post even after Harvard was forced to pay millions in damages to the government for Schleifer's tawdry insider dealings in Russia? Will professors of absurd and outrageous conspiracy theories continue to be allowed to teach impressionable youngsters their twisted views of the events of 9/11 and Islamofascism, as Professor of History and senior adviser to the Zelikow coverup commission Ernest May currently does in his course on 9/11? Will Harvard's student paper, a breeding ground for New York Times wannabes continue to follow the path of Judith Miller's employer into journalistic irrelevance? Will the sophomore who was praised for her precocious book contract before it was discovered that she plagiarized huge parts of her book graduate on time and with honors?

Such is the state of the world's premier validator of truth, or Veritas as it is called here. Ever more a haven for politicos in between more lucrative corporate gigs, Harvard is a place where the elite can hobnob with each other in a reassuringly genteel setting in order to build up points in their integrity and intellect columns before jumping back onto the merry-go-round of filthy lucre. Here students learn from the best not just to plagiarize (google Tribe and Dershowitz and Plagiarism) but also to embezzle funds from charities (google: harvard cancer charity embezzlement) and student groups (google: harvard newspaper embezzlement, or harvard theatre group embezzlement, etc.) That is, when they are not pressure-cooked into killing their roommates and themselves (google: Sinedu Tadesse) or posing as raving anti-semites to tar leftist student weblogs (google Eric Trager and HIPJ)

In the midst of such perfidy even the righteous act of firing an unsavory and heartless President (google: Summers toxic waste) is not redemptive enough, and the silence at Harvard on the subject of 9/11 confirms the worst that can be inferred from the above incomplete list of moral and ethical slips. Given that backdrop, the role of a truther amid these children and educators of some of America's wealthiest and most powerful can be a thankless task. But not always, especially in the middle of Harvard Square, where Baez and Dylan and Chapman all sang their blues among the crimson flames. Here a truther finds support from the folks who still see Harvard Square and Cambridge Massachusetts as a capital of true progressivism, who bemoan the attempts to transform, with mixed success, the gritty Square scene of the past with the gleaming Square that anchors one end of the commercial Golden Mile that some hope will extend through Central Square (once removal of the homeless is complete) to Thomas "pancake" Eagar and Noam "Gatekeeper" Chomsky's MIT.

Here brews unrest among those who see the writing on these old walls, the writings of Emerson and Thoreau, and of Pedro Albizu Campos, and so many others who have spoken truth to power and appealed to sensibilities greater than those of the mammon that courses through the narrow streets of this new Babylon. As Socrates was condemned for corrupting the youth with truth, so are today's Truthers looked on askance by the powers that be when they threaten to shake up the rotting husk of the establishment's old guard. Not that they have a choice in the matter. From within and without, the Truth is seeping into the collective conscience, and there will soon be nowhere left for the rats to hide--as a new era dawns, the cleansing light of the sun will shine even behind the shield of Veritas, and in the warmth of this newborn dawn truth and knowledge will again become one.

My Back Pages by Bob Dylan

Crimson flames tied through my ears
Rollin' high and mighty traps
Pounced with fire on flaming roads
Using ideas as my maps
"We'll meet on edges, soon," said I
Proud 'neath heated brow.
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now.

Half-wracked prejudice leaped forth
"Rip down all hate," I screamed
Lies that life is black and white
Spoke from my skull. I dreamed
Romantic facts of musketeers
Foundationed deep, somehow.
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now.

Girls' faces formed the forward path
From phony jealousy
To memorizing politics
Of ancient history
Flung down by corpse evangelists
Unthought of, though, somehow.
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now.

A self-ordained professor's tongue
Too serious to fool
Spouted out that liberty
Is just equality in school
"Equality," I spoke the word
As if a wedding vow.
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now.

In a soldier's stance, I aimed my hand
At the mongrel dogs who teach
Fearing not I'd become my enemy
In the instant that I preach
Vision led by confusion boats
Mutiny from stern to bow.
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now.

Yes, my guard stood hard when abstract threats
Too noble to neglect
Deceived me into thinking
I had something to protect
Good and bad, I define these terms
Quite clear, no doubt, somehow.
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now.

Copyright © 1964; renewed 1992 Special Rider Music