Pentagon to cut ties with Ivy League and other top universities, Hegseth says

The Department of Defense is blocking active-duty troops from attending graduate-level education at Ivy League schools and other top universities, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced Friday.

Hegseth announced the move Friday afternoon in a video posted to social media. He accused the universities of being “breeding grounds of toxic indoctrination” and said that the ban would go into effect for the 2026-2027 academic year. The move effectively ends troops’ participation in higher learning at some of the top universities in the country.

“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,” he 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. They’ve replaced the study of victory and pragmatic realism with the promotion of wokeness and weakness.”

Hegesth did not provide examples of what was being promoted or what prompted the move, but said that the universities are teaching the “enemy’s wicked ideologies.” The ban includes universities such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Princeton, Yale, Brown, Columbia and “many others.” A full list of impacted schools was not given.

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It is not immediately clear what this means for troops currently enrolled in these universities for this academic year and in multi-year programs. The secretary called for “complete and immediate cancellation of all Department of War attendance,” using the administration’s nickname for the Department of Defense, but did not elaborate on what that means in action. Task & Purpose reached out to the Department of Defense about this, which said it did not have anything additional to share and directed Task & Purpose back to Hegseth’s video.

In the video Hegseth also announced a “top to bottom” review of the military’s own war colleges, with the goal of making them “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.”

It follows a move by the department earlier this month to cut ties with Harvard University, with Hegseth accusing it of being a “factory for woke ideology.” On Feb. 6 he said that the Pentagon was ending its graduate-level training and certificate programs with the university. In that case and this announcement, the Pentagon and the secretary have not elaborated on what “woke” means. Hegseth himself holds degrees from Princeton and Harvard.

The announcement regarding the universities also follows other high-profile fights between them and the Trump administration. Last year the administration canceled federal funding and launched investigations into several universities, accusing them of fostering antisemitism and criticizing policies regarding diversity and inclusion. Several of the targeted schools made deals with the administration to regain that funding.