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Hegseth ramps up culture war with universities after cutting ties with Harvard 

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth isn’t just cutting ties with Harvard University. He’s signaling something much bigger: that exposure to elite civilian education is now suspect if it doesn’t align ideologically with the Pentagon’s leadership.  

In a video announcing the decision to sever academic ties starting in the 2026–2027 school year, Hegseth called Harvard “one of the red-hot centers of hate-America activism.”  Here’s what he claimed, without evidence:  

“Too many faculty members openly loathe our military. They cast our armed forces in a negative light. … 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.  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.”   

He ended it with, “We train warriors, not wokesters … Harvard, good riddance.”  

But let’s be serious — this isn’t about one university. A memo now directs the military branches to evaluate other top-tier institutions for potential bans on tuition assistance. An Army list reportedly flags 34 law schools at “moderate to high risk.” That includes institutions attended by leaders across the political spectrum — President Trump’s alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania; Vice President Vance’s law school, Yale; even Hegseth himself, who attended Princeton and Harvard.  

So what exactly is the standard here? Because if the threshold is whether a campus leans left, that’s not a national security metric. That’s a political one.  

Rosa Brooks, a former Pentagon adviser, called the move “stunningly short-sighted.” Others warn it politicizes military education. Civilian graduate programs are designed to challenge assumptions — on economics, technology, governance, diplomacy. That exposure isn’t a substitute for war colleges; it complements them.  

If we believe our officers are strong enough to lead in combat, are we really arguing they’re too fragile to sit in a seminar and distinguish opinion from fact?  

There’s also a strategic cost. Tuition assistance at places like Harvard, MIT or Georgetown is a recruitment and retention tool. As Scott Peoples of Veterans for Responsible Leadership put it, limiting those options could hurt both. When officers leave service, those degrees help them transition. Taking that away doesn’t just send a message to universities — it sends one to the members of the military.  

And then there’s precedent. Once you start blacklisting institutions based on perceived politics, you open the door for the next administration to do the same, in the opposite direction. Professional military education becomes a partisan football instead of a long-term investment in leadership.

We should want officers who can navigate complexity, challenge assumptions and understand a world that doesn’t think in lockstep. Restricting where they can learn because of ideological grievances doesn’t strengthen the military, it narrows it.  

If our national defense depends on intellectual insulation rather than intellectual rigor, we have a much bigger problem than any campus could create. 

Lindsey Granger is a NewsNation contributor and co-host of The Hill’s commentary show “Rising.” This column is an edited transcription of her on-air commentary.   

Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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