Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Friday that the department is severing its academic ties with Harvard University.
This means that starting in the 2026-2027 school year, the Pentagon will discontinue graduate-level professional military education, fellowships and certificate programs at the school. Military personnel currently attending classes will be able to finish them.
“For too long, this department has sent our best and brightest officers to Harvard, hoping the university would better understand and appreciate our warrior class,” Hegseth said in a statement. “Instead, 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.”
Straight Arrow News reached out to Harvard University for comment.
In his statement, Hegseth said the U.S. military has previously had an “important and often positive” relationship with Harvard. Today, though, he said, Harvard is no longer a welcoming institution to military personnel or the right place to develop them.
The relationship between the Trump administration and Harvard University has been fraught, as they say Harvard promotes what they call a “woke” ideology through diversity and inclusion policies.
Trump and administration officials also repeatedly accused the university of antisemitism, saying it failed to protect Jewish students during pro-Palestinian rallies on campus protests in 2024. Harvard has denied these claims, and in April 2025, released a report outlining steps it said it was taking to address antisemitism and anti-Muslim bias on campus.
This past year, the administration cut off billions of dollars in federal research grants, frozen funding, threatened Harvard’s tax-exempt status and targeted the enrollment of international students. Harvard challenged several of these actions in court, saying they are unlawful and beyond the government’s authority. A ruling last year by a federal judge in Boston restored the university’s federal funding and blocked limits on international students.
Most recently, Trump, on Monday night, posted on Truth Social that he is demanding $1 billion in damages and declaring he wants “nothing further to do, into the future, with Harvard University.”
Hegseth said Friday that graduate programs for active-duty service members at other universities are being evaluated as well.
“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 and our military graduate programs.”
