Pentagon chief blocks officers from Ivy League schools and top universities

Hacker News · Feb 28, 2026 · Collected from RSS

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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is overhauling the list of schools that military officers can attend for professional courses and graduate programs. In a memo on Friday on professional military education institutions, he announced the elimination of certain Senior Service College fellowship programs for the 2026-2027 academic year and beyond. “We must develop strategic thinkers through education grounded in the founding principles and documents of the republic, embracing peace through strength and American ideals, and focused on our national strategies and grounded in realism,” he wrote. “We will no longer invest in institutions that fail to sharpen our leaders’ warfighting capabilities or that undermine the very values they are sworn to defend.” The list of canceled institutions includes Ivy League schools Harvard, MIT, Yale, Columbia, Brown and Princeton as well as other top universities like Carnegie Mellon and Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. That comes after the Pentagon chief said earlier this month that he would cancel professional military education, fellowships, and certificate programs with Harvard. In his memo, Hegseth also included a list of potential new partners schools: Liberty University, George Mason University, Pepperdine, University ofTennessee, University of Michigan, University of Nebraska, University of North Carolina, Clemson, and Baylor, among others. “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,” Hegseth said in a video posted on X on Friday. Despite his accusation that the schools on his banned list are “anti-American,” some of them have been partners with the military on key emerging priorities. For example, the Army’s Artificial Intelligence Integration Center is located at Carnegie Mellon University, which has long been a top source of AI innovation. The center is meant to increase the Army’s familiarity with AI applications and better connect the service with AI leaders in the private sector. In addition, the Space Force partnered with the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies for officer intermediate level education and senior level education. Representatives for the Army’s AI center and the Space Force didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment on how Hegseth’s directive will affect partnerships with their respective schools. The change comes as the Trump administration is cutting off Anthropic as a provider of AI technology to the federal government, including the Defense Department, while expanding ties with OpenAI and xAI. Join us at the Fortune Workplace Innovation Summit May 19–20, 2026, in Atlanta. The next era of workplace innovation is here—and the old playbook is being rewritten. At this exclusive, high-energy event, the world’s most innovative leaders will convene to explore how AI, humanity, and strategy converge to redefine, again, the future of work. Register now.