Pete Hegseth announced that the Department of War will cut ties with several Ivy League universities, arguing that elite institutions have undermined military education and failed to uphold what he described as a foundational responsibility to the nation’s armed forces.
“There should exist a sacred trust between America’s institutions and our warriors,” Hegseth said. “It should be a trust that demands we develop our finest military leaders with the highest standards, so that they are equipped to fight and win our nation’s wars with absolute lethality, from basic training to the Halls of higher education.”
He said senior service colleges are expected to prepare war fighters for leadership at the highest levels.
“Our Senior Service colleges have always been expected to act in the interest of this principle, to transform our senior war fighters into strategic thinkers capable of mastering the complexities of modern warfare and leading our joint force to victory at every echelon,” Hegseth said.
Hegseth argued that this responsibility has not been met.
“Unfortunately, this sacred trust has been broken in this military’s professional military education system,” he said. “It’s been poisoned from within by a class of so called elite universities who have abused their privilege and access to this department and utterly betrayed their purpose.”
He accused Ivy League and similar institutions of misusing taxpayer funding.
“For decades, the Ivy League and similar institutions have gorged themselves on a trust fund of American taxpayer dollars, only to become factories of anti American resentment and military disdain,” Hegseth said.
“They’ve taken our best and brightest, the men and women who pledged their lives to this nation, and subjected them to a curriculum of contempt,” he continued.
“They’ve replaced the study of victory and pragmatic realism with the promotion of wokeness and weakness,” Hegseth said. “They’ve traded true intellectual rigor for radical dogma, sacrificing free expression for the suffocating confines of leftist ideology.”
He questioned the purpose of such educational investments.
“What is the purpose you may ask of investing in an education that teaches our warriors to despise the very nation they swore to defend?” Hegseth said. “What’s the value of a degree that seeks to hollow out their warrior ethos and replace it with a creed of globalist submission?”
“The answer is simple,” he said. “There is none.”
Hegseth described the issue in direct terms.
“Let’s be brutally honest about how we define our terms here,” he said. “This is not education. It’s indoctrination.”
“It’s a calculated, targeted assault on the core of our fighting force, and it is a betrayal that we will no longer tolerate,” he added.
Hegseth said the department will no longer fund attendance at those institutions.
“The Department of War is finished subsidizing the corruption of our own uniform class,” he said. “We’re done paying for the privilege of our enemy’s wicked ideologies to be taught to our future leaders. We’ve had enough.”
He outlined expectations for military education moving forward.
“We demand that senior service colleges work to sharpen our war fighters on genuine national security issues, not social justice activism,” Hegseth said.
“We demand curriculums grounded in the founding principles of this republic, principles that champion the enduring ideals of peace through strength and putting American interests first,” he continued.
He also called for universities to invest in the nation rather than its adversaries.
“We demand universities that invest back into our nation’s prosperity rather than our greatest adversaries,” Hegseth said. “It’s common sense.”
He announced specific action regarding Ivy League schools.
“No longer will we sit back and treat these woke breeding grounds of toxic indoctrination as valid centers of so called intellectual curiosity,” Hegseth said.
“We cannot and will not continue to send our most capable officers, senior officers, into graduate programs that undermine the very values they have sworn to uphold,” he added.
“That’s why today, just like we did with Harvard, I’m ordering the complete and immediate cancelation of all Department of War attendance at institutions like Princeton, Columbia, MIT Brown, Yale and many others, starting next academic year, 2026 2027,” Hegseth said.
He also announced an internal review of military education programs.
“Furthermore, we’re going to hold ourselves accountable as well,” he said. “In the coming days, I will direct a formal top to bottom review of our own internal war colleges, ensuring they are once again bastions of strategic thought, wholly dedicated to the singular mission of developing the most lethal and effective leaders and war fighters the world has ever known.”
Hegseth closed with a message to military personnel.
“As a final message to our warriors, the Ivy League faculty lounges may loathe you, the so called elite of academia may mock your patriotism and disdain your sacrifice, but never forget that we the War Department have your back,” he said.
“The American people have your back, and President Trump has your back always.”
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