Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth leaves an oath of enlistment ceremony, Friday, February 6, 2026, held at the base of the Washington Monument in Washington, DC
Kevin Wolf/AP
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Kevin Wolf/AP
The Pentagon said Friday that it will cut ties with Harvard University and end all military training, scholarships and certification programs with the Ivy League institution.
The announcement marks the latest development in the Trump administration’s long-running standoff with Harvard over White House demands for reforms at the Ivy League school.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a statement Friday that Harvard “no longer meets the needs of the War Department and the military services.”
“For too long, this department has sent our best and brightest officers to Harvard, hoping that the university would better understand and appreciate our warrior class,” Hegseth said. “Instead, many of our officers came back looking too much like Harvard: heads full of globalist and radical ideologies that do not improve our fighting ranks.”
In a separate post on X, Hegseth wrote: “Harvard is awake; the War Department is not.”
Beginning with the 2026-27 academic year, the Pentagon will suspend postgraduate professional military education, scholarships and certification programs, according to the statement. Staff currently taking classes at Harvard will be able to complete those courses.
Similar programs at other Ivy League universities will be evaluated in the coming weeks, Hegseth said.
Hegseth earned a master’s degree at Harvard, but symbolically returned his diploma in a 2022 Fox News segment. A Pentagon social media account run by Hegseth’s office resurfaced the clip in which Hegseth, then a Fox News commentator, returned the diploma and wrote “Return to sender” with a marker.
The Army offers its officers a variety of opportunities to pursue graduate education both at military-run war schools and at civilian institutions such as Harvard.
Generally speaking, while opportunities to attend prestigious civilian schools offer fewer direct benefits to a service member’s military career than their civilian counterparts, they help make troops more attractive employees once they leave the military.
Harvard has long been President Donald Trump’s top target in his administration’s campaign to win back the country’s most prestigious universities. Its officials have cut billions of dollars in federal research funding for Harvard and sought to block the university from enrolling foreign students after the campus rejected a series of government demands last April.
The White House has said it is punishing Harvard for tolerating anti-Jewish bias on campus. Harvard leaders argue that they face illegal retaliation for not adopting the administration’s ideological views. Harvard sued the administration in a pair of lawsuits. A federal judge issued orders in favor of Harvard in both cases. The administration is appealing.
Tensions had eased over the summer as Trump advanced a deal he said was just days away. It never materialized, and on Monday the president dug deeper, demanding $1 billion from Harvard as part of any deal to restore federal funding. That’s double what he had demanded before.