‘Wokeness and weakness’: Pete Hegseth cancels War Department involvement with ‘biased’ universities

U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has canceled the department’s involvement in a number of “biased” universities.

The confirmation involves the end of tuition assistance and other War Department subsidies for Princeton, Columbia, MIT, Brown, Yale and others, starting in the 2026-2027 school year.

It involves the “complete and immediate cancellation of all Department of War attendance” at the schools.

“A source familiar with the matter told CNN that this entails the cessation of tuition assistance for schools deemed biased against the U.S. military and sponsoring ‘troublesome partnerships with foreign adversaries,’ as detailed in a memo signed by Hegseth. All graduate-level professional military education, fellowships, and certificate programs at these universities for active-duty service members will be cut,” said a report from the Washington Examiner.

For too long, the Ivy League and similar institutions have been subjecting our warriors to woke indoctrination—those days are over. pic.twitter.com/0xMC6BArDd

— Secretary of War Pete Hegseth (@SecWar) February 27, 2026

He said the schools, considered among the nation’s “elite” institutions, replaced “the study of victory and pragmatic realism with the promotion of wokeness and weakness.”

“Senior service colleges have always been expected to act in the interest of this principle, to transform our senior war fighters into strategic thinkers capable of mastering the complexities of modern warfare and leading our joint force to victory at every echelon,” he said. “Unfortunately, this sacred trust has been broken in this military’s professional military education system. It’s been poisoned from within by a class of so-called elite universities who’ve abused their privilege and access to this department and utterly betrayed their purpose.”

They’ve used, he charged, taxpayer dollars to become “factories of anti-American resentment and military disdain.”

He also said he was ordering an interview of department war colleges to make sure they are “bastions of strategic thought.”

He said, “Let’s be brutally honest about how we define our terms here. This is not education. It’s indoctrination. It’s a calculated, targeted assault on the core of our fighting force, and it is a betrayal that we will no longer tolerate.”