One day before the United States began an ill-defined and illegal war of indefinite length with Iran, Pete Hegseth angrily attacked a different enemy: the Ivy League. The Secretary of War denounced Ivy League universities as "woke breeding grounds of toxic indoctrination” and then eliminated long-standing college fellowship programs with more than a dozen elite colleges, which had historically served as a pipeline for service members to the upper ranks of military leadership. Of the schools now on Hegseth’s "no-fly list," four sit in the top ten of the World’s Top Universities for 2026. So, why does the Secretary of War not want his armed forces to have the best education available? Because he wants a military without a brain.
For a guy obsessed with being the strongest and most lethal force in the world, cutting access to world-class schools is a bizarre gambit. It does reveal Hegseth doesn’t consider intelligence a factor–let alone an asset–in strength or lethality. That tracks. Hegseth alleges the Ivies infect officers with “globalist and radical ideologies that do not improve our fighting ranks…” God forbid the tip of the sword of our foreign policy has knowledge of international cooperation and global interconnectedness. The Ivy League has its own issues, but the Pentagon’s claim that they "fail to deliver rigorous education grounded in realism” is almost laughable. I’m a veteran Lieutenant Commander with two Ivy League degrees, both paid for with military tuition assistance, and I promise: it was rigorous. Meanwhile, are Hegseth’s performative politics grounded in reality? Attacking Harvard on social media the eve of initiating a new war with a foreign adversary is disgraceful, and even delusional.
As a matter of national security, we need our service members to be well educated, and the service academies are sadly insufficient. The Air Force Operating Concept 2035 advises that future advantages belong to "bold, adaptive, and innovative leaders," yet service academies often produce officers whose “supervised and structured” experiences have consisted mainly of "responding to directions." Even the U.S. Army War College articulated the issue here: “it is assumed that the…structured, centralized system will…develop them into out-of-the-box thinkers... The probability of that happening is slim.” Outside fellowships were designed in part to correct this, injecting broader perspectives into an often conforming system. By canceling them, Hegseth all-but-ensures the upper ranks remain academy-reared echo chambers.
As Hegseth strips our officers’ access to the best research institutions in the world, China is doing the opposite. Recognizing that it is more important to outthink your enemy than to outfight him, the 2026 Chinese Five-Year Plan emphasizes investing in research and cultivating world-class talent. But while “Chinese leaders are encouraging the creation of a more innovative and creative youth…the U.S. is going towards an elitist and backward education system where conformist citizens are validated and rewarded.” It’s even worse in the U.S. military–a regimented organization historically and continuously valuing obedience and uniformity, even submissiveness, where too often successful innovation only occurs after the existing leadership and doctrine have been delegitimized by defeat. Waiting for defeat to knock enough sense into us that we finally challenge the status quo won’t keep our country safe.
The military needs these institutions. Hegseth cannot compete with the civilian research ecosystem–the Ivy League’s cutting-edge AI laboratories, semiconductor programs, or professors. While I was in ROTC at the University of Pennsylvania, Professor David Eisenhower, the grandson of President Eisenhower, became a mentor of mine. As an officer-in-training, I cherished learning from the grandson of the former Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe during World War II, because duh. By severing the military’s ties to the world’s finest institutions, Hegseth will isolate the force and weaken it.
The isolation is intentional; it is easier to indoctrinate in a bubble. Hegseth isn’t mad that servicemembers go to good schools but that they practice the kind of thinking while there that may lead them to one day challenge the Trump agenda. For the same reason, the Trump regime attacked veteran lawmakers who dared to remind service members of their legal duty to disobey unlawful orders. Hegseth now wants to avoid the influence of education. Because, as the regime flirts increasingly with lawlessness, they want troops who won’t question orders. Hegseth craves compliance, and thinking threatens that. Eliminating “wokeness” is a happy byproduct, but the goal is blind obedience. It’s a strategic lobotomy.
Given that the Secretary of War is taking the best educational opportunities away from our servicemembers, we must examine what he is giving them instead. As it turns out, Hegseth is swapping elite fellowships for extremist rhetoric from figures like Pastor Doug Wilson, cultivating a force primed for radicalization. The consequences are already surfacing: Military Religious Freedom Foundation reports indicate dozens of commanders are gleefully framing the Iran conflict as "God’s divine plan," casting the President as a messianic figure "anointed" to ignite Armageddon. This blurring of church and state is a direct assault on any oath to support and defend the Constitution.
If we continue along this path, the Trump regime will eventually reduce the ranks to an isolated horde of white Christian nationalist loyalists, rendering the American military a brute squad. Somewhere along the way, however, we may discover that a military that lacks the intellectual framework to uphold its oath to the Constitution is also not one that can outsmart an enemy. War would be a harrowing place to learn that lesson.
The transformation is not yet complete. Congress should exercise its oversight authority to protect these educational pipelines, and the targeted institutions should proactively create military-civilian education initiatives that can survive any single administration’s mandate. Harvard is allowing servicemembers to defer admission while also arranging for “expedited consideration” at non-blacklisted schools–others should follow suit. And for those currently in uniform: continue to read and be curious, to think critically, and to mentor each other to be "bold, adaptive, and innovative leaders.” The intellectual integrity of the force may be yours to preserve.Julie Roland was a Naval Officer for ten years, deploying to both the South China Sea and the Persian Gulf as a helicopter pilot before separating in June 2025 as a Lieutenant Commander. She has a law degree from the University of San Diego, a Master of Laws from Columbia University, and is a member of the Truman National Security Project.
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