Pentagon To Cut Academic Ties With Harvard, Hegseth Says

Authored by Aldgra Fredly via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said on Feb. 6 that the Pentagon will cut all academic ties with Harvard University as the institution “no longer meets the needs of the War Department or the military services.”

Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., on July 4, 2025. Learner Liu/The Epoch Times

Hegseth said the Pentagon would discontinue graduate-level professional military education, fellowships, and certificate programs with the Ivy League school beginning in the 2026-27 academic year for active duty service members.

This policy will apply to service members enrolling in future courses, while military personnel already enrolled at Harvard will still be allowed to finish their courses, according to the Pentagon chief.

“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,” he said in a statement.

“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.”

Hegseth said Harvard is no longer a welcoming institution for military personnel, citing its partnership with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) on campus research programs and a campus culture he said enabled attacks on Jewish students and “promotes discrimination based on race in violation of Supreme Court decisions.”

In a separate post on X, Hegseth said the institution was promoting “woke” ideology, which goes against the department’s values.

File this under: LONG OVERDUE

The @DeptWar is formally ending ALL Professional Military Education, fellowships, and certificate programs with Harvard University.

Harvard is woke; The War Department is not. pic.twitter.com/0kpsvivtsQ

— Secretary of War Pete Hegseth (@SecWar) February 6, 2026

The Pentagon and military services also will evaluate similar relationships with other Ivy League schools and civilian universities in the coming weeks, according to the statement.

“The goal is to determine whether or not they actually deliver cost-effective strategic education for future senior leaders when compared to, say, public universities and our military graduate programs,” Hegseth said.

The Epoch Times has reached out to Harvard for comment and did not receive a response by publication time.

Earlier this week, President Donald Trump said his administration would demand Harvard pay $1 billion in damages, accusing the university of being “strongly antisemitic.”

“Harvard has been, for a long time, behaving very badly! They wanted to do a convoluted job training concept, but it was turned down in that it was wholly inadequate and would not have been, in our opinion, successful,” he wrote on Truth Social.

The Trump administration has attempted to freeze billions of dollars in federal funding from Harvard following an investigation into diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives and claims of anti-Semitism in higher education last year. The White House said in April 2025 that Harvard failed to protect its students from harassment and violence on campus.

Harvard President Alan Garber filed a lawsuit against the administration in April 2025, seeking to restore $2.2 billion in grants and contracts withheld by the government.

A federal judge later reversed the funding freeze, ruling that the government violated the First Amendment through its efforts to combat anti-Semitism. The Justice Department appealed the decision in December 2025.