DOD Bans Military Members From Attending Elite Schools

The Pentagon will forbid members of the military from attending Columbia, Yale, Brown, and other universities starting next school year amid a campaign to cut ties with institutions that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called "factories of anti-American resentment." Hegseth announced the policy in a video posted to social media on Friday, three weeks after he said the military was cutting ties with Harvard University. Without citing evidence, Hegseth said the universities have become "breeding grounds of toxic indoctrination" that undermine military values, per the AP.

"For decades, the Ivy League and similar institutions have gorged themselves on a trust fund of American taxpayer dollars, only to become factories of anti-American resentment and military disdain," Hegseth said. "They've replaced the study of victory and pragmatic realism with the promotion of wokeness and weakness." Hegseth said the ban applies to Columbia, Princeton, Brown, Yale, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and "many others," without elaborating. He called for "complete and immediate cancellation of all Department of War attendance," though it wasn't clear how broadly it would be applied. A message seeking further details wasn't immediately answered by the Pentagon.

As of Friday, Columbia, Brown, MIT, and Harvard were still listed as eligible institutions in a Pentagon database for its tuition assistance program, which covers the full cost of tuition for active-duty personnel. Harvard had 39 participants in 2023, according to the most recent data, while Columbia had nine and MIT had two. The earlier action against Harvard aims to block members of the military from attending graduate-level professional military education, fellowships, and certificate programs, per a statement released at the time. There are still questions about whether it applies to programs such as Harvard's Reserve Officers' Training Corps program.

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 at civilian institutions like Harvard. Campuses across the Ivy League have been a favorite target of President Trump, who accuses them of becoming overrun by "woke" ideology. His administration has cut billions of dollars in research funding and attempted a number of other sanctions against the universities, often as part of investigations into allegations that officials tolerated antisemitism on campus.