Feb. 7 (UPI) — Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced that the Pentagon would end its academic partnership with Harvard University over what he called a “woke” institution that is not welcoming to the U.S. military.
In a video posted on Friday to X, Hegseth said the Department of Defense would end its partnership and work with the private university — which dates to before the American Revolution — over its alleged “wokeness.”
The move, according to a statement from the Pentagon, is “because attendance at the school no longer meets the needs of the [Department of Defense] or the military services.”
Calling the decision “long overdue,” Hegseth said that all professional military education, fellowships and certificate programs at Harvard will be formally ended starting with the 2026-2027 school year.
Members of the military who are already attending classes there, however, will be permitted to finish their courses of study, the Pentagon said.
Noting that the U.S. military has had “an important and often positive relationship” with the university for more than 250 years, Hegseth said that “Harvard is no longer a welcoming institution to military personnel or the right place to develop them.”
“Too many of our officers came back looking too much like Harvard — heads full of globalist and radical ideologies that do not improve our fighting ranks,” he said, adding that “the school has become a factory for woke ideology and a breeding ground for anti-American radicals.”
Hegseth alleged that Harvard research programs work with the Chinese Communist Party, university leadership has encouraged celebrations of Hamas and allowed attacks on Jewish students, and that the university “promotes discrimination based on race.”
Harvard University has been involved in some way with the U.S. military in an official capacity since 1775 when George Washington used the university as a military base, according to The Harvard Gazette.
Washington basing about 1,000 soldiers in Harvard Yard followed Harvard students and faculty who had “given their lives for the burgeoning nation” in war efforts for 150 years preceding the Revolutionary War, the university said.
Since President Donald Trump was inaugurated back into office in January 2025, Harvard has been one of several universities to draw his administration’s ire.
This has included everything from protests against the war between Israel and Hamas, academic programs and federal investments it deemed waste and their introduction of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs to improve student and faculty life.
Hegseth noted in the statement about Harvard that DOD plans to evaluate all existing graduate education programs for active-duty members of the military at all Ivy League and other universities.
“The goal is to determine whether or not they actually deliver cost-effective strategic education for future senior leaders when compared to, say, public universities or our military graduate programs,” he said.
