Hegseth added that he would be looking at the Defense Department’s involvement with “all existing graduate programs for active-duty service members at all Ivy League universities and other civilian universities.” I reached out to Harvard to ask what the impact of Hegseth’s announcement might be on military participation at the university and was told that it is still sorting out the implications but that graduate students associated with the Defense Department across various Harvard divisions could be affected, including in the law school, Ph.D. programs, the Kennedy School, and continuing-education classes. They go so that they can comprehend the complexities of the world they live in, develop the intellectual skills to be agile and dispassionate thinkers throughout their career, and, most important, spend time among the civilians they will one day work with in creating strategy, procuring weapons, and planning the use of force. Hegseth yet again is showing that he is unfit for his post: He doesn’t seem to understand (or care) that when some of these young officers attain the ranks that Hegseth never reached and become senior leaders in the United States Armed Forces, what they learned at a top university or at a senior war college will be a lot more important than how many push-ups they did 20 years ago.
Author: Tom Nichols
Published at: 2026-02-09 22:54:43
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