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.