Pentagon says it’s cutting ties with ‘woke’ Harvard, discontinuing military training, fellowships

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth leaves an oath of enlistment ceremony, Friday, Feb. 6, 2026, held on the base of the Washington Monument in Washington. (AP Photo/Kevin Wolf)

The Pentagon said Friday it is cutting ties with Harvard University, ending all military training, fellowships and certificate programs with the Ivy League institution.

The announcement marks the latest development in the Trump administration’s prolonged standoff with Harvard over the White House’s demands for reforms at the Ivy League school.

Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a statement Friday that Harvard “no longer meets the needs of the War Department or the military services.”

“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. “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.”

In a separate post on X, Hegseth wrote, “Harvard is woke; The War Department is not.”

Starting with the 2026-27 academic year, the Pentagon will discontinue graduate-level professional military education, fellowships and certificate programs, the statement said. Personnel currently attending classes at Harvard will be able to finish those courses.

Similar programs at other Ivy League universities will be evaluated in coming weeks, Hegseth said.

Hegseth earned a master’s degree from Harvard but symbolically returned his diploma in a 2022 Fox News segment. A Pentagon social media account run by Hegseth’s office resurfaced the clip in which Hegseth, then a Fox News commentator, returned the diploma and wrote “Return to Sender” on it with a marker.

The military offers its officers a variety of opportunities to get graduate-level education both at war colleges run by the military as well as civilian institutions like Harvard.

Broadly, while opportunities to attend prestigious civilian schools offer less direct benefit to a servicemember’s military career than their civilian counterparts, they help make troops more attractive employees once they leave the military.

Harvard has long been U.S. President Donald Trump’s top target in his administration’s campaign to bring the nation’s most prestigious universities to heel. His officials have cut billions of dollars in Harvard’s federal research funding and attempted to block it from enrolling foreign students after the campus rebuffed a series of government demands last April.

The White House has said it’s punishing Harvard for tolerating anti-Jewish bias on campus. Harvard leaders argue they’re facing illegal retaliation for failing to adopt the administration’s ideological views. Harvard sued the administration in a pair of lawsuits. A federal judge issued orders siding with Harvard in both cases. The administration is appealing.

Tensions had eased over the summer as Trump teased a deal that he said was just days away. It never materialized and on Monday the president dug deeper, demanding US$1 billion from Harvard as part of any deal to restore federal funding. That’s twice what he had demanded before.

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The Associated Press