Leaked U.S. Army email classifies Wake Forest as “high risk” institution - Old Gold & Black

Leaked photos of an internal U.S. Army email show Wake Forest appearing on a list of 33 “moderate to high risk” universities, CNN and Business Insider reported in February. It’s unclear what exactly the Army means by this designation, which comes shortly after the Defense Department announced it would end its academic partnerships with Harvard University.

On Friday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said he would block service members from attending certain selective universities, including Princeton University, Columbia University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Brown University, Yale University and “many others.” Hegseth said the ban would come into effect for the 2026-2027 academic year; the Defense Department has not published a full list of affected institutions.

“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 in a video posted to X, formerly known as Twitter.

ROTC professor: No official warnings of significant changes for Wake Forest

Lt. Col. John Flach, an active-duty Army officer and professor of military science with the No Fear Battalion, Wake Forest’s Army Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) program, said in an interview Thursday that he saw no official indication that the Army is reassessing its partnerships with the university.

“The list that’s been circulated was a picture of somebody’s computer, about an unofficial email,” Flach said. “The Army has published no list of high or moderate risk universities, so we don’t have any reason to believe that that’s the case.”

Even if the Army did cut academic ties with Wake Forest, Flach said he anticipated only minimal effects for enrolled service members and ROTC cadets.

“All other programs [beyond Harvard] are still under evaluation,” Flach said. “I do know that all current students in a funded program would be allowed to continue their education, even for the program at Harvard.”

“It doesn’t have anything to do with undergraduate education programs or education assistance, and it certainly doesn’t have anything to do with ROTC,” Flach continued. “So ROTC programs would remain in place.”

Wake Forest has historical and current Army connections

Wake Forest shares longstanding partnerships with the U.S. Army. During World War II, the then-College hosted the Army’s Advanced Finance School on its campus in Wake Forest, N.C. Following the war, a chemical warfare officer established a ROTC branch of the Army Chemical Corps Reserve at Wake Forest, which enrolled hundreds of students. Wake Forest maintained high ROTC participation over the next several decades.

Today, Wake Forest enrolls a handful of active-duty service members, usually in professional programs. 13 active and former military personnel attended the Wake Forest School of Law in Spring 2025.

“All those folks, even if the Army came out today and said that we were gonna follow the path that Harvard went down, they wouldn’t be affected,” Flach said. “Veterans would still be able to use veterans’ education benefits here – at least, there is no indication or discussion of any of that changing.”

One change that will take effect soon: Wake Forest ROTC will transition from a “host university” program to an extension unit of ROTC at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. The move is driven by the Army’s reductions in force as part of the Trump administration’s campaign to shrink the federal government. Flach said the number of ROTC staff at Wake Forest “will be reduced slightly” but that the “student experience won’t change.”

“We’ll still have full-time cadets. We’ll still have scholarships,” Flach said. “They’re still going to have class here, [physical training] here, leadership laboratory here… If anything, I would argue the cadet experience is going to improve from just additional diversity and additional access to resources.”