As students, we’ve seen “Veritas” crest everything we do. Meaning “truth” in Latin, the word takes its place within the Harvard laurel, letters scattered across three open books, professing to ground the university’s knowledge-seeking ethos. “Veritas” is etched into every nook and cranny on campus, both in our physical terrain and our linguistic landscape — from “Veritaffles,” the coveted Annenberg brunch meal, to “sanitas,” the now-defunct Dorm Crew’s tongue-in-cheek slogan.
For an institution with an eye for truth, we do often go out of our way to hide it. The truth of the Secret Court of 1920, an administrative tribunal charged with investigating and purging homosexuality within the student body, was only unearthed in the early 2000s. The University’s long-ignored ties to slavery are finally seeing light as a $100 million-backed initiative promotes scholarship on the subject; already, researchers have uncovered that faculty and administrators at the university enslaved over 70 Black and Indigenous people between 1636 and 1783. And in 2019, one of our publication’s own reporters unveiled, through his investigation for our hallmark Red Line program, Harvard’s unwelcome expansion into the Allston community. Perhaps the oldest representation of our foibles with the truth — and easily the most visible — is the Statue of Three Lies, a staple of Harvard Yard erroneously hailing John Harvard as the founder of the university.
This cycle, we invite you to a magazine devoted to the truth, or more aptly, the hindrance of it. Initially proposed by Local Editors Aidan Scully and Naomi Corlette, “Cover Up!” aims to pull the curtain on political secrecy at every level. The theme shines a light on the role of transparency in sustaining a healthy society, and the consequences that result when it is thwarted.
In these (web)pages, you’ll find our writers delve into different niches within our local and global environment, looking to uncover the truth behind various political cover-ups. Alicia Campbell takes you from 1940s Germany to present-day China, demonstrating how institutions and individuals with political power conceal human rights abuses using various rhetorical strategies. Arjun Bhattarai sits down with Siri Nelson, head of the National Whistleblower Center, to discuss the culture around whistleblowing and the state of protections for those who go public with secret information. Finally, Kendrick Foster invites you to leave your seat and join him on a visual trek through Boston’s very own Freedom Trail; through his photo journal, he goes beyond the gauzy, whitewashed presentation of our nation’s findings to explore off-the-itinerary stops like Beacon Hill and the Museum of African American History, paying tribute to the freedom trails of Black Americans and women. Together, the pieces of this cycle demonstrate the many places where actualities can hide, whether halfway across the globe or within the corners of our vision.
As always, we owe a tremendous thanks to our Covers editors, Amen Gashaw and Liana McGhee, for spearheading this cycle, and coordinating across our editorial and publication fronts in order to assemble this digital magazine. The two have authored pieces of their own for the cycle, Gashaw a meditation on the implications of “Canada Goose” couture — the fashion trend costing a fortune — and McGhee a piece on the children whose labor drives the profit of one of the world’s largest multinational candy companies. They have threaded their own commentaries within the larger magazine, all the while maintaining an eye for design, layout, and editorial cohesion across the publication.
Following a summer dedicated to political cover-ups, our staff will train its scrutinous eye on the upcoming midterm elections, which promise to bring in a new slate of elected leaders to public office. Our United States staff writers will deliver coverage on races across the country, and our Tech editors will join them with an ambitious data visualization agenda, assembling a nationwide midterm forecast of key races. Our Local editors will turn to the grassroots, compiling an election guide for Massachusetts voters ahead of state and national contests. Also in preparation for the midterms, this fall we are honored to welcome back to our ranks Alex Burns, former president of the HPR, to discuss his recent book on the 2020 election, This Will Not Pass, and examine the races ahead.
As you read this magazine, we invite you to interrogate the narratives that patch up the fault lines within our political and social reality, no matter how large or small. While the names Watergate and Teapot Dome ring through our collective memory and history, many more scandals pass on silently. As such, this magazine aims to sharpen our vision to our surroundings, both the evident and the invisible. After all, you never know when you might stumble across the next big cover-up.
