Pentagon to cut ties with Harvard over ‘wokesters’, ending training, programs and fellowships

The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has said the Pentagon is ending all military training, fellowships and certificate programs with Harvard University, marking the Trump administration’s latest escalation against the Ivy League school.“The @DeptWar is formally ending ALL Professional Military Education, fellowships, and certificate programs with Harvard University,” Hegseth said in a statement posted on X, labeling Harvard as “woke”.Hegseth, a former Fox weekend host, attacked the university as “one of the red-hot centers of Hate America activism”.The move to cancel military programs with Harvard follows months of threats, demands and lawsuits involving the Trump administration against Harvard. Trump has targeted federal funding at numerous universities in a broad push to force educational institutions to align themselves with the administration’s worldviews, while alleging that US universities promote antisemitism and leftist ideology.Harvard has been a focal point in the administration’s fight with higher education, and earlier this week Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that he would be seeking $1bn in damages from the university over allegations that it enabled antisemitism. Harvard’s president, Alan Garber, has pushed back against those claims in the past year, rejecting those allegations as false and calling the administration’s pressure campaign an attack on academic freedom.Hegseth has railed against what he describes as wokeness, sought to end diversity programs, and postured himself as an aggressive, brash defense secretary. On Friday, Hegseth framed Harvard as a radical leftist institution that sought to undermine the US armed forces.“Too many faculty members openly loathe our military; they cast our armed forces in. a negative light and squelch anyone who challenges their leftist political leanings,” said Hegseth, who made no mention of the master’s degree in public policy he earned from Harvard’s John F Kennedy school of government.“With some exceptions,” Hegseth added, “the Ivy League as a whole has pervasive institutional bias and a lack of viewpoint diversity, including the coddling of toxic ideologies that undercuts our mission.”“That is why, in two weeks’ time, components of all of our departments – army, navy and air force – will evaluate all existing graduate programs for active-duty service members at all Ivy League universities and other civilian universities,” he added.The Pentagon’s focus on “building lethality”, Hegseth also said, “no longer includes spending millions of dollars on expensive universities that actively undercut our mission and undercut our country”.The Harvard alumnus ended his video message with: “We train warriors, not wokesters. Harvard: good riddance.”Hegseth’s attack on Harvard has been a theme of his political rhetoric for years. He disparaged the school in two of his books, and, in a live segment of the morning show Fox & Friends in 2022, he made a show of defacing his diploma and writing “Return to sender” on it in large letters.During the same broadcast, Hegseth acknowledged that he was not really “returning” his degree, saying: “People will say: ‘This is just a stunt, you still have a degree.’ And that’s fine, I went, I got the degree, I walked, took the classes and all that.”Trump’s campaign against top US universities has focused on a range of issues including pro-Palestinian protests, diversity programs, transgender policies and climate initiatives. Many universities, including Harvard, rely on federal funding for their research programs – giving the administration a means of coercing institutions with threats to cut off that cash flow.Among the administration’s demands to Harvard are that the university end its diversity initiatives, ban face masks and provide information to US immigration authorities amid Trump’s anti-immigrant crackdown.