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Citing ‘wokeness,’ Pentagon cancels military fellowships at New England schools like MIT and Tufts
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth accused these elite institutions of "indoctrination" that favors "leftist ideology."
The Pentagon recently announced that it is ending fellowship programs for active-duty military personnel at a number of elite universities, including MIT, Tufts University, and Brown University.
The policy changes were outlined in a memo issued by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth last Friday. In a video posted to social media, Hegseth said that these institutions have used taxpayer dollars to foster “anti-American resentment.”
“They’ve replaced the study of victory and pragmatic realism with the promotion of wokeness and weakness. They’ve traded true intellectual rigor for radical dogma, sacrificing free expression for the suffocating confines of leftist ideology,” he said.
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The announcement comes weeks after Hegseth announced that the Pentagon would discontinue graduate-level professional military education, fellowships, and certificate programs at Harvard.
Senior Service College fellowships are being eliminated at 13 American colleges and universities, as well as one in Canada. Fellowships are also being eliminated at non-profits like the Brookings Institution. These changes will go into effect starting with the 2026-27 academic year. Military personnel currently enrolled in these fellowships will be allowed to complete their courses.
A total of 93 fellowships are being canceled across 22 institutions, such as Yale University and Middlebury College.
The Pentagon identified a number of institutions as potential new partners, including a number of state schools like the University of Michigan and Arizona State University. Officials identified these institutions based on criteria like “intellectual freedom” and “minimal public expressions in opposition to the [Department of Defense],” according to the memo.
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Hegseth has degrees from both Princeton University and Harvard, which were both targeted. He lamented that these schools had supposedly emphasized “globalist submission” in their students.
“This is not education, it’s indoctrination,” he said.
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