Pentagon terminates GW fellowship over alleged anti-military bias - The GW Hatchet

The Department of Defense will bar senior military officers from a fellowship placement at GW starting next academic year, citing the University’s alleged “anti-American resentment and military disdain,” a memo confirmed Friday.

The memo, signed and released Friday by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announcing terminations across 22 universities, identified one current GW participant in a DOD Senior Service College Fellowship — a partnership with a higher education institution that high-ranking military officers complete to strengthen analytical and strategic skills — that the department will terminate starting next academic year. The move comes weeks after an internal DOD memo, first obtained by CNN last month, labeled GW as one of 34 universities at “moderate to high risk” of losing graduate military tuition assistance for the 2026-27 academic year due to alleged bias against the U.S. military and “troublesome partnerships” with foreign adversaries.

“We will no longer invest in institutions that fail to sharpen our leaders’ warfighting capabilities or that undermine the very values they are sworn to defend,” Hegseth wrote in Friday’s memo.

Friday’s memo does not address GW’s eligibility for the DOD Tuition Assistance program — the focus of Hegseth’s Feb. 6 memo, which allows active-duty service members across all branches to receive tuition support for off-duty education programs. As of Sunday, a DOD tuition assistance database still listed GW as an eligible institution.

Chief Pentagon Spokesperson Sean Parnell said in a Friday release individuals currently enrolled in an SSC Fellowship at one of named universities will be allowed to complete their courses of study. The Pentagon canceled a total of 93 fellowships across 22 universities and research institutions that exhibited “wicked ideologies,” according to the memo and an accompanying video, and suggested potential new partner institutions for military fellows, like George Mason and Liberty universities.

SSC fellowships give senior service members opportunities to study national security policy, strategy and operational issues to “substantially enhance” their ability to perform their duties in the national security field, according to the United States Army War College. Fellows attend more than 60 host institutions that the department selects and reviews each year based on their “strategic focus areas, academic excellence and resident national security professionals.”

Hegseth said in the video announcing the terminations he is ordering the “complete and immediate cancellation” of all DOD attendance at institutions like Ivy League universities and “many others” but did not specify the other universities he was referring to.

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

The DOD did not return a request for comment asking whether the department plans to halt all active duty tuition assistance at GW or bar all troops from studying at the University. DOD also did not immediately return a request for comment on which instances of institutional anti-military bias or “anti-American resentment” the department deemed GW committed to be placed on this list.

A University spokesperson declined to comment on which school the affected student attends, whether the University is aware of the memo, whether it has contacted the DOD about the cancellation or if the decision could affect all DOD tuition assistance at the University.

The spokesperson also declined to comment on whether officials anticipate the canceled fellowship or possible revocation of tuition assistance to affect other military-affiliated programs at GW, like its Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps program.

GW had 180 participants in the tuition assistance program in fiscal year 2023, the last year data is available, with DOD paying the University $378,875 for their attendance, according to the database.

Hegseth said in the video senior service colleges have always been expected to act in the interest of equipping U.S. military leaders to fight and win wars with “absolute lethality.” He said, for decades, Ivy League and similar institutions have “gorged themselves” on a “trust fund” of American taxpayer dollars.

“This sacred trust has been broken in this military’s professional military education system, it’s been poisoned from within by a class of so-called elite universities who’ve abused their privilege and access to this department and utterly betrayed their purpose,” Hegseth said in the video.

The attendance number aligns with the statistics reported on GW’s Military & Veteran Services website last updated in August 2024, which states over 1,100 military-affiliated students attend the University, with about 16 percent — or roughly 180 — on active duty.

GW has historically educated dozens of top U.S. military leaders in its graduate programs.

Mark Esper, the Secretary of Defense under President Donald Trump from 2019 to 2020, earned a doctorate in public policy from GW in 2009. Thad Allen, who served as the commandant of the Coast Guard from 2006 to 2010, earned a master of public administration from GW in 1986.

Peter Pace, a retired Marine Corps four-star general who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under former President George W. Bush from 2005 to 2007, earned a master of business administration from the University in 1972. John Shalikashvili, who served as NATO’s supreme allied commander of Europe from 1992 to 1993 and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1993 to 1997 earned a master’s in international affairs from GW in 1970, while serving in the Army.

Hegseth said universities have taken the nation’s “best and brightest” and subjected them to a “curriculum of contempt,” replacing the study of victory and pragmatic realism with the promotion of “wokeness and weakness.”

“They’ve traded true intellectual rigor for radical dogma, sacrificing free expression for the suffocating confines of leftist ideology,” he said.