Pentagon officials will prevent U.S. troops from enrolling at Columbia University, Yale University, Brown University and several other private schools starting next school year, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said, framing the move as part of a broader effort to sever ties with universities he described as hostile to American values. The Pentagon action, Hegseth said, is aimed at cutting off access to what he called “factories of anti-American resentment” and what he said are “breeding grounds of toxic indoctrination.”
Hegseth announced the policy in a video posted to social media on Friday, about three weeks after he said the military was cutting ties with Harvard University. In the video, he did not provide evidence for his characterization of the universities’ role in shaping military members’ values. “For decades, the Ivy League and similar institutions have gorged themselves on a trust fund of American taxpayer dollars,” Hegseth said, “only to become factories of anti-American resentment and military disdain.”
Hegseth added that the universities have replaced “the study of victory and pragmatic realism” with “the promotion of wokeness and weakness.” He said the ban would apply to Columbia, Princeton, Brown, Yale, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and “many others,” but he did not elaborate on which additional schools would be included. He also called for “complete and immediate cancellation of all Department of War attendance,” without clarifying what programs the statement would cover.
A message seeking further details about the scope of the policy was not immediately answered by the Pentagon, according to the Associated Press. The announcement also left unanswered questions about how the restriction would interact with specific military education pathways offered through civilian institutions.
As of Friday, Columbia, Brown, MIT and Harvard were still listed as eligible institutions in the Pentagon’s 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 cited by AP, while Columbia had nine and MIT had two. Those figures suggest that the new restriction, at least as described publicly by Hegseth, was aimed at military attendance through the Pentagon’s other mechanisms rather than the Tuition Assistance program as a whole.
AP reported that a prior Harvard-related action sought to block members of the military from attending graduate-level professional military education, fellowships and certificate programs, and that there remained questions about whether it would also extend to programs such as Harvard’s Reserve Officers’ Training Corps. The military offers officers graduate-level education opportunities through both war colleges run by the military and civilian institutions, including programs at Ivy League and peer universities.
Hegseth’s announcement followed months in which campuses across the Ivy League had been frequent targets of President Donald Trump, who has accused universities of being overrun by “woke” ideology. AP said the administration has cut billions of dollars in research funding and attempted other sanctions against the universities, often in connection with investigations into allegations that officials tolerated antisemitism on campus.
The Associated Press said Hegseth’s action also rebuked universities that had appeared to reach a truce with the administration in recent months. It noted that Columbia and Brown were among the earliest schools to sign deals with the White House, agreeing to demands in order to have federal funding restored.
Harvard has pushed back against the demands through lawsuits alleging the government is illegally retaliating for rebuffing what it described as ideological views. AP said Trump previously indicated in late summer that he was days away from a deal with Harvard, but negotiations later appeared to have stalled. AP also reported that Trump later said Harvard would have to pay $1 billion to the government as part of any deal, twice what he had previously demanded.