Hegseth bans military from attending Princeton, Columbia, MIT, other ‘factories of military disdain’

(LifeSiteNews) — Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced that he has ordered the “complete and immediate cancellation” of all Department of War attendants at “elite” universities where the campus culture is openly antithetical, if not openly hostile, to the goals of the U.S. military. 

Among universities cited by Hegseth were Princeton, Columbia, MIT (the Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Brown, Yale, and many “others” starting with the 2026-27 academic year.  

Earlier this month, Hegseth cut the military’s ties with Harvard University, saying “We train warriors, not wokesters. Harvard, good riddance.”

“For decades, the ivy leagues and similar institutions have gorged themselves on a trust fund of American taxpayer dollars, only to become factories of anti-American resentment and military disdain,” Hegseth said in a video statement released Friday.  

“They’ve taken our best and brightest — the men and women who pledge their lives to this nation — and subjected them to a curriculum of contempt,” he noted. “They’ve replaced the study of victory and pragmatic realism with the promotion of wokeness and weakness.” 

“What is the purpose of investing in an education that teaches our warriors to despise the very nation they swore to defend?” he asked. “What’s the value of a degree that seeks to hollow out their warrior ethos and replace it with a creed of globalist submission?”

“This is not education, it’s indoctrination,” he declared, and “it’s a betrayal we’ll no longer tolerate.’

“We demand that senior service colleges work to sharpen our war fighters on genuine national security issues, not social justice activism. We demand curriculums grounded in the founding principles of this republic, principles that champion the enduring ideals of peace through strength and putting American interests first,” Hegseth explained.

“As a final message to our warriors,” Hegseth said, “the Ivy League faculty lounges may loathe you, the so-called elite of academia may mock your patriotism and disdain your sacrifice, but never forget that we the War Department have your back.”

For too long, the Ivy League and similar institutions have been subjecting our warriors to woke indoctrination—those days are over. pic.twitter.com/0xMC6BArDd

— Secretary of War Pete Hegseth (@SecWar) February 27, 2026

Hegseth did his post-graduate studies at Harvard in 2013. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University in 2003.