Hegseth says Pentagon cutting ties with top universities, calling them “woke breeding grounds”

Washington — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Friday that the Pentagon would be canceling troops’ attendance at graduate programs at some of the nation’s top universities, calling them “woke breeding grounds of toxic indoctrination.” 

“Today, just like we did with Harvard, I am ordering the complete and immediate cancellation 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 in a video statement.

“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,” Hegseth said.

The Pentagon announced earlier this month that it would be ending all military training, fellowships and certificate programs with Harvard amid the Trump administration’s adversarial relationship with the Ivy League school. 

Hegseth accused the universities of becoming “factories of anti-American resentment and military disdain.” 

“They’ve replaced the study of victory and pragmatic realism with the promotion of wokeness and weakness,” he said. “They’ve traded true intellectual rigor for radical dogma, sacrificing free expression for the suffocating confines of leftist ideology. 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 himself holds degrees from Princeton and Harvard.

The secretary also said he would be initiating a “top-to-bottom review” of the war colleges to ensure they are “wholly dedicated to the singular mission of developing the most lethal and effective leaders and war fighters the world has ever known.”