Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is overhauling the list of schools that military officers can attend for professional courses and graduate programs.
“We must develop strategic thinkers through education grounded in the founding principles and documents of the republic, embracing peace through strength and American ideals, and focused on our national strategies and grounded in realism,” he wrote. “We will no longer invest in institutions that fail to sharpen our leaders’ warfighting capabilities or that undermine the very values they are sworn to defend.”
The list of canceled institutions includes Ivy League schools Harvard, MIT, Yale, Columbia, Brown and Princeton as well as other top universities like Carnegie Mellon and Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies.
That comes after the Pentagon chief said earlier this month that he would cancel professional military education, fellowships, and certificate programs with Harvard.
In his memo, Hegseth also included a list of potential new partners schools: Liberty University, George Mason University, Pepperdine, University ofTennessee, University of Michigan, University of Nebraska, University of North Carolina, Clemson, and Baylor, among others.
Despite his accusation that the schools on his banned list are “anti-American,” some of them have been partners with the military on key emerging priorities.
The center is meant to increase the Army’s familiarity with AI applications and better connect the service with AI leaders in the private sector.
Representatives for the Army’s AI center and the Space Force didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment on how Hegseth’s directive will affect partnerships with their respective schools.
The change comes as the Trump administration is cutting off Anthropic as a provider of AI technology to the federal government, including the Defense Department, while expanding ties with OpenAI and xAI.
