The Standing

A daily, non-partisan record of US democratic norms — and the events that erode them.

    Hegseth cancels 93 military fellowships at elite universities, bars officers from attending

    In a memo signed February 27, 2026 — "Aligning Senior Service College Opportunities With American Values" — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the cancellation of about 93 Pentagon-funded Senior Service College fellowships at roughly 22 civilian universities, including Princeton, Yale, Columbia, Brown, MIT, and Georgetown, effective the 2026–27 academic year. He barred the military from sending active-duty officers to graduate programs at the named schools, declaring in a same-day video that elite institutions had become "factories of anti-American resentment and military disdain." Officers already enrolled were permitted to finish their coursework.

    Jurisdiction
    federal
    Location
    Washington, D.C.

    Abuses documented

    Actors

    • Pete Hegseth
    • U.S. Department of Defense

    On February 27, 2026, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth signed a memo titled "Aligning Senior Service College Opportunities With American Values," ordering the cancellation of the Pentagon's Senior Service College (SSC) fellowship programs at roughly 22 civilian universities. The order terminates about 93 fellowships effective the 2026–27 academic year and bars the military from sending active-duty officers to graduate programs and fellowships at the affected schools. Named institutions include Princeton, Yale, Columbia, Brown, MIT, Harvard, Tufts, Johns Hopkins (SAIS), and Georgetown.

    In a video posted to X the same day, Hegseth said the Department of War would no longer send active-duty students to these schools, declaring that "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." The memo states it is "imperative that our warfighter education system forges strategic senior leaders who are trained to think critically, free of bias and influence." Officers currently enrolled were permitted to finish their coursework. The action expanded an earlier February 6 decision to sever the Pentagon's academic ties with Harvard.

    Withdrawing the military's professional-education relationships from institutions explicitly because the administration deems them ideologically hostile treats officer education as a political instrument and conditions where the military will train its strategic leaders on a partisan litmus test — the core of politicization of the uniformed services. Excluding specific universities and their programs from a federal relationship on the basis of perceived viewpoint or association also constitutes blacklisting.

    This February 27 fellowship-cancellation memo is a distinct, earlier act from the March 12, 2026 task force convened to ideologically review the military's own senior service colleges (recorded separately). Both are facets of the same broader effort to align professional military education with the administration's political values.

    Why we recorded this

    A military under civilian control depends on a professional officer corps trained to exercise independent strategic judgment, not selected and educated according to a sitting administration's political tastes. When the Defense Secretary cancels the military's graduate fellowships at named civilian universities because he deems those institutions ideologically hostile — branding them "factories of anti-American resentment" — he conditions where the armed forces may train their future strategic leaders on a partisan litmus test and cuts specific schools out of a federal relationship over their presumed politics. The Standing records this because treating officer education as a political instrument, and excluding institutions from government participation on the basis of perceived viewpoint, erodes the norm of a nonpartisan military insulated from the ideological agenda of whoever holds power.

    Sources

    1. Hegseth Orders End to Pentagon-Funded Attendance at Several Elite Universities — Military.com primary accessed June 12, 2026
    2. Memo: Aligning Senior Service College Opportunities With American Values — U.S. Department of Defense primary accessed June 12, 2026
    3. Pentagon Cancels Fellowships at 13 'Elite' U.S. Colleges — Inside Higher Ed secondary accessed June 12, 2026
    4. Citing 'wokeness,' Pentagon cancels military fellowships at New England schools like MIT and Tufts — Boston.com secondary accessed June 12, 2026

    See also