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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”.
“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 masters 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.”
Donald Trump’s administration has cracked down on top US universities, including Harvard, over a range of issues such as pro-Palestinian protests, diversity programs, transgender policies and climate initiatives.
