U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has announced that U.S. troops will no longer attend graduate-level programs at numerous Ivy League and top-tier universities beginning in the 2026–27 academic year.
Fox News reports that a February memorandum reveals that the War Department canceled 93 fellowship positions across 22 elite institutions, including Harvard, MIT, Georgetown, Columbia and Princeton, arguing that “woke” ideology was weakening military education.
Citing the need for a “sacred trust between America’s institutions and our warriors,” Hegseth reiterated the requirement that our senior war fighters be trained as strategic thinkers and decried the fact that trust has been broken by a class of elite universities which have “utterly betrayed their purpose.”
For too long, the Ivy League and similar institutions have been subjecting our warriors to woke indoctrination—those days are over. pic.twitter.com/0xMC6BArDd
— Secretary of War Pete Hegseth (@SecWar) February 27, 2026