Defense Department Severs Academic Ties with Harvard

The United States Department of Defense announced Friday evening it would sever all academic ties with Harvard, saying the University’s partnerships with Chinese institutions and antisemitism on campus were an affront to “American values and interests.”

Defense Secretary Pete B. Hegseth, who graduated from the Harvard Kennedy School in 2013, said his department would “discontinue graduate-level professional military education, fellowship, and certificate programs at the school” in a Friday press release.

Hegseth argued that officers who trained at Harvard enter the military “full of globalist and radical ideologies that do not improve our fighting ranks” and that the University had lost its status as a “welcoming institution” to military personnel.

“Too many faculty members openly loathe our military,” he said in a five-minute long video on X announcing the move. “They cast our armed forces in a negative light and squelch anyone who challenges their leftist political leanings.”

The move, according to Hegseth, will not apply to military personnel currently enrolled at the school and would go into effect in the 2026-27 academic year.

A Harvard spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. It is unclear how many students have historically enrolled in the programs cited by Hegseth.

Hegseth said Harvard was the first university to receive such treatment, pledging that the Defense Department would consider levying similar measures on other Ivy League institutions in the coming days.

“The goal is to determine whether or not they actually deliver cost-effective strategic education for future senior leaders when compared to, say, public universities and our military graduate programs," Hegseth said.

In his final year at HKS, Hegseth wrote a policy brief that called for Minnesota to create a high school that would “emphasize equity” and enroll a “diverse student body.”

Since taking the helm of the Department of Defense in 2025, Hegseth has adopted a remarkably different tenor, targeting mentions of diversity, equity, and inclusion in his department and beyond.

In his address, Hegseth said Harvard was once a standard bearer in training future military service members, even acknowledging that Harvard had more Medal of Honor recipients than any other civilian institution. Now, the school is failing to meet the mark, he said.

—Staff writer Hugo C. Chiasson can be reached at [email protected] or on Signal at hcc.35. Follow him on X @HugoChiassonn.

—Staff writer Elise A. Spenner can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on X @EliseSpenner.