Pentagon cuts ties with Harvard, ending military training and fellowships

On February 6, 2026, the Pentagon — which the administration styles the "Department of War" — announced it was ending all graduate-level professional military education, fellowships, and certificate programs connecting Harvard University to the U.S. armed forces, effective the 2026–27 academic year. In a statement, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Harvard "no longer meets the needs of the War Department or the military services," and that officers sent there too often "came back looking too much like Harvard — heads full of globalist and radical ideologies that do not improve our fighting ranks." A Pentagon social media account run by his office posted, "Harvard is woke; The War Department is not."

Personnel already enrolled were permitted to finish their courses, and Hegseth said similar programs at other Ivy League universities would be evaluated in the coming weeks, alleging "pervasive institutional bias." The cut landed amid the administration's prolonged standoff with Harvard, which had rebuffed federal demands, lost billions in research funding, and sued the government — winning court orders that the funding freeze was unlawful, now under appeal. It was the opening, Harvard-specific salvo of a broader effort: on February 27, 2026, Hegseth canceled roughly 93 Senior Service College fellowships at about 22 civilian universities (recorded separately), a list that pointedly no longer named Harvard, which had already been cut here.

The Standing records this as a politicization of the uniformed services: the executive branch conditioning where military officers may be educated on a viewpoint-based test, and excluding a named institution from a federal relationship over its perceived politics as part of a wider pressure campaign against a single university.