Focus on Statue of John Harvard and analyze the Seals and inscriptions.
The monument's six-foot
granite plinth is by Boston architect Charles Howard Walker.
On its southern side (the side to the viewer's right), in bronze, is the seal of John Harvard's alma mater, the University of Cambridge's Emmanuel College; on the northern side is what Ellis called "that most felicitously chosen of all like devices, the three open books and the veritas of Harvard. The pupil of the one institution was the founder of the other, transferring learning from its foreign home to this once wilderness scene." 
On the rear are the words
GIVEN BY  •   SAMUEL JAMES BRIDGE  •   JUNE 17, 1883.The face of the plinth is inscribed (in letters originally gilt)[M]JOHN HARVARD  •   FOUNDER  •  1638‍—‌words "hardly read before some smartass guide breezily informs the unsuspecting visitor that this is, after all, the 'Statue of the Three Lies'" (as Douglas Shand-Tucci put it)
because (as is ritually related to freshmen and 
visitors):the statue is not a likeness of JOHN HARVARD;
it was the Great and General Court of the Massachu­setts Bay Colony‍—‌not John Harvard‍—‌which first voted "to give 400£ towards a schoale or Colledge", preempting any claim for John Harvard as FOUNDER; and
the Court's vote came in 1636, not in the inscription's 1638‍—‌the latter being merely the year of John Harvard's bequest to the school.However (Shand-Tucci continues) "the idea of the three lies is at best a fourth, and by far the greater falsehood," 
as detailed in a 1934 letter to the Harvard Crimson from the secretary of the Harvard Corporation and director of the school's then-upcoming Tercenten­ary Celebration:The facts as to John Harvard's relation to the founding of the College are not at all in dispute nor can it be said that the statue in front of University Hall does any violence to them.
No likeness of John Harvard having been preserved, the statue
[is an "ideal" representa­tion].
If the founding of a university must be dated to a split second of time, then the founding of Harvard should perhaps be fixed by the fall of the president's gavel in announcing the passage of the vote of October 28, 1636
[see History of Harvard University].
But if the founding is to be regarded as a process rather than as a single event
[then John Harvard, by virtue of his bequest "at the very threshold of the College's existence and going further than any other contribution made up to that time to ensure its permanence"] is clearly entitled to be considered a founder. The General Court ...
acknowledged the fact by bestowing his name on the College.These are all familiar facts and it is well that they should be understood by the sons of Harvard. They are entirely compatible with the inscription on John Harvard's statue. There is no myth to be destroyed.
John Harvard History of Harvard University Harvard University Harvard Corporation University Hall gilt right plinth veritas arch Harvard Crimson Crimson Charles Howard Walker Emmanuel College devices £