Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who earned his master’s degree from Harvard University in 2013, has launched a sweeping campaign to cut military ties with the very elite universities where he was educated, denouncing them as bastions of “wokeness” and “wicked ideologies,” The New York Times reported Saturday.
In a video posted to social media on Friday, Hegseth lambasted the prestigious institutions as politically liberal schools engaged in indoctrinating U.S. service members, announcing that beginning in September, the Defense Department would ban military personnel from attending graduate programs and fellowships at nearly two dozen universities.
The blacklist includes not only Harvard, which was banned earlier this month, but also MIT, Princeton, Yale, Brown, Georgetown, Johns Hopkins, Columbia, and countless others. The Pentagon also announced it would sever ties with seven high-profile Washington think tanks known for defense and national security analysis.
According to the Defense Department, 93 military officers are currently enrolled in graduate-level programs at these institutions, with the largest cohort of 21 students attending Harvard. Many of these programs offer mid- and senior-level officer courses on national and international security.
In a memo detailing the cuts, the Pentagon said it would replace these elite academic programs with courses offered by state universities and conservative Christian schools, specifically naming Liberty University and Hillsdale College as preferred alternatives.
“This decisive change will ensure our leaders receive a more rigorous and relevant education,” the memo stated.
The move represents an escalation of the Trump administration’s broader pressure campaign against higher education institutions it deems too progressive. Some of the universities now being blacklisted by Hegseth have already capitulated to earlier demands from the Trump administration and agreed to sweeping changes to campus culture.
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