“In two weeks time, components of all of our departments — Army, Navy and Air Force — will evaluate all existing graduate programs for active-duty service members at all Ivy League universities, and other civilian universities.” -- Sec Defense Hegseth Feb 6, 2026
Pentagon may bar tuition aid for top universities in Pete Hegseth’s crackdown on ‘biased’ schools
CNN Feb 13, 2026: … The policy was rolled out in a memo signed by Hegseth last week saying that beginning with the 2026-2027 school year, the Pentagon would be severing its relationship with Harvard University and discontinuing all graduate-level professional military education, fellowships and certificate programs there for active-duty service members.
Hegseth ordered the military services to “evaluate all existing graduate programs for active-duty members at Ivy League universities and any other universities that similarly diminish critical thinking and have significant adversary involvement, and determine whether they deliver cost-effective, strategic education for future senior leaders when compared to public universities and military masters programs,” according to a source familiar with the memo….
A preliminary list of at-risk schools compiled by the Army for troops enrolling in law school and reviewed by CNN characterizes the following schools as being at “moderate to high risk” of being banned: American University, Boston College, Boston University, Brown University, Carnegie Mellon, Case Western University, Columbia University, College of William and Mary, Cornell University, Duke, Emory, Florida Institute of Technology, Fordham, Georgetown, George Washington University, Harvard, Hawaii Pacific University, Johns Hopkins University, the London School of Economics and Political Science, MIT, Northeastern University, Northwestern University, New York University, Pepperdine, Princeton, Stanford, Tufts, University of Miami, University of Pennsylvania, University of Southern California, Vanderbilt, Wake Forest, Washington University in St Louis, and Yale.
A source familiar with Hegseth’s guidance told CNN that the implication is that “graduate programs for highest performing officers and non-commissioned officers are almost certainly at risk.”…
The guidance was first mentioned publicly in a video Hegseth posted on social media last week, in which he bashed Harvard and other American universities that have “pervasive institutional bias” saying they “no longer live up to their founding principles, as bastions of free speech, open inquiry, and committed to the American values that make our country great.”
“In two weeks time, components of all of our departments — Army, Navy, and Air Force — will evaluate all existing graduate programs for active duty service members at all Ivy League universities, and other civilian universities,” Hegseth said….
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