Secretary Hegseth’s efforts to promote ideological conformity in military education programs will make officers less creative—and less effective on the battlefield.
As Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s quest to vanquish “wokeness” now reaches elite universities, one thing has become clear: it is not about eliminating ideological bias or elitism in the military generally. Instead, it is about creating a new, alternative elite—one that adheres to the political orthodoxy of the regime currently in charge.
Last month, Hegseth cancelled all existing partnerships for the Senior Service College (SSC) Fellowship, a partial equivalent to war college education—providing officers with advanced degrees from a range of civilian universities, non-profits, and other institutions. He will replace them with new partners of his choosing this coming 2026–27 academic year.
Given that fewer than 100 officers across the entire US military participate in these fellowships at any given time, why is Hegseth focused on this instead of such pressing matters as future force design, the United States’ limited defense industrial base, sustaining and winning a potential Indo-Pacific war against a peer/near-peer adversary, sustaining and winning an active war in Iran, maintaining American maritime dominance, or writing a coherent National Defense Strategy? It’s a good question. The answer is less so.
Officers Need Intellectual Freedom. Hegseth Is Giving Them the Opposite.
Hegseth accuses elite universities—and especially Ivy League universities like Princeton, his alma mater—of breeding anti-American ideology and contempt for the military that corrodes American society. He seeks to topple the intellectual and cultural hierarchy atop which they sit. This is part of the Trump administration’s culture war, which targets selected civilian universities accused of promoting anti-Semitism, Marxism, or simply ideologically-incorrect anti-Trumpism.
The administration has tried to make federal research funding contingent on supporting Trump administration policy priorities. Over the last year, it has sought to freeze or cut allocated grants and funding to offending universities, offered to turn on the spigot if those same schools allow Trump administration-directed oversight, and redirected monies to compliant universities. Other major social institutions, including primary and secondary schools, museums, performing arts centers, media outlets, and law firms, have come under similar fire.
However, the US military is unique in its capacity to instigate a major cultural shift that upends the existing social hierarchy. Indeed, the armed services have been the vanguard for many major social changes in American society, including racial desegregation and universal healthcare.
Hegseth’s February 27 memo, “Realigning Senior Service College Opportunities with American Values,” states that new senior service education partners will be chosen in part for how well they promote “intellectual freedom.” In fairness to Hegseth, intellectual freedom is an important criterion for future officers. After all, open educational experiences and intellectual development are essential for senior military leaders—-and, moreover, easier to get in civilian settings. Military classrooms are often stultified by the pervasive and necessary hierarchical structure and culture of the larger military institution and every service member’s constant awareness of their own and everyone else’s rank.
But underlying this memo is the Secretary’s crusade against elitism he deems to be of the wrong kind. His directive is the latest salvo in his ongoing culture war against establishment elites by adding ideological litmus testing. Partner institutions will also be chosen on the basis of their “minimal public expressions in opposition of the Department.”
This is intentionally vague, but is meant to encourage public support for the Trump administration’s political views—or at least stifle individual faculty members’ and students’ stated opposition to them. Ironically, this state of affairs is precisely the opposite of embracing intellectual freedom. At the end of his video announcement, Hegseth reinforced his message by indulging in friend-enemy politicking, claiming to the military that elite academic faculty “loathe” the armed forces, “mock your patriotism, and disdain your sacrifice.” On the other hand, in Hegseth’s telling, he, President Donald Trump, and the American people “have your back.”
What Would Real DOD Education Reform Look Like?
Inconsistencies and culture war aside, cancelling the US military’s existing partnerships wholesale while replacing them with schools that can pass thinly-veiled ideological litmus tests is the wrong way to achieve Hegseth’s goal of reforming war college education. Perhaps these partner institutions’ programs need top-to-bottom review, just as the war colleges will be subjected to; but a genuine attempt to develop “the most lethal and effective leaders and warfighters the world has ever known” would not follow the cancellation of existing scholarships with a set of ideologically-chosen ones.
Appropriate changes to the SSC Fellowship might include an open application process for potential partner universities, blind review of applications, and retention of civilian educational prerogatives. In a blind review of university applications, a DOD review panel could ask questions and request more information, but without knowledge of which university is applying. Application reviews and program evaluations should not be allowed to compel or suggest changes to the civilian program offered in order to qualify for SSC Fellowship partnership. Evaluators should determine only whether the program meets content-neutral criteria—by focusing on the academic and intellectual quality of the program for the military’s educational purposes, without reference to whether these institutions or individuals affiliated with them have run afoul of the Trump administration for other reasons.
Crucially, these civilian programs should not exist or be tailored to serve the US military. Military personnel should get the full civilian experience, just as civilians do. This is the purpose of sending service members to civilian institutions: to deliberately give some service members different educational experiences and different sets of knowledge. It is equally important that many officers continue to attend the existing war colleges; ultimately, both sides will benefit from the other.
There Is More to War Than “Warfighting”
Focusing on “just warfighting”, as Hegseth advocates, would have the US military fight war for its own sake. But wars are not fought within self-enclosed environments like games or sports, and militaries cannot win wars fighting as if they were. Wars are fought in complex, unfamiliar, and often shifting geopolitical operating environments, and the military must understand the world outside of itself. At their best, war colleges would educate senior leaders about that broader operating environment, and as partial war college substitutes, Senior Service College Fellowships should do the same.
The US military hardly lacks for training and lethality. What senior leaders need is the ability to think and act strategically. War colleges not only provide joint acculturation, but also education for future senior commanders and senior staff who will lead a work force of diverse military and civilian members. They must be able to develop strategic objectives that plausibly promote the policy aims; devise operational and tactical plans that could plausibly achieve those strategic objectives; and constantly make trade-offs between and across the tactical, operational, and strategic, all while keeping the policy aim in sight.
Doing so requires drawing from the breadth of human knowledge, beyond what is taught by the military in its own educational and training institutions. As the ones who will fight and perhaps die, it is in the military’s interest to seek means to understand and assess broader strategic environments in which they operate—especially when its civilian leadership does not bother to do so.
The US military should want a range of geopolitical and social expertise within its ranks, just as it needs a range of military and logistic specializations among its personnel to operate an effective modern, complex, joint fighting force. This is not only why war colleges need civilian academic faculty, but also why there should always be some military personnel who are educated more immersively in civilian settings.
Military and civilian observers alike might be surprised at the list of schools that make the cut at the end of a sincerely content-neutral application process for SSC Fellowship partnership. The DoD just might find that it establishes a set of scholarships that enhance US military personnel’s strategic thinking and military effectiveness in a rapidly-shifting geopolitical environment—rather than a set developed merely by throwing political harpoons after a great woke white whale.