Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth launched a 90-day review of the nation’s senior military educational institutions Friday, directing a new task force to identify and eliminate courses he said have no place in the U.S. Armed forces. The directive targets the Army War College, National Defense University, Naval War College, Marine Corps University, and the Air War College, collectively responsible for educating the military’s senior officers.
“We need to rip ’em out, and we’re going to,” Hegseth said at a press briefing.
Hegseth cited specific examples of course content he called incompatible with military readiness: seminars on “genocide through the analytic of gender,” classes on “whiteness studies,” a course featuring a professor who described Hamas attacks as “astounding” and “incredible,” and graduate studies focused on abolishing law enforcement.
“The truth is, they help cultivate a radical hate-America agenda, and we can’t afford that same toxic ideology in America’s War Department,” Hegseth said. “It degrades our readiness. It’s a risk to our forces. And it undermines our mission of peace through strength.”
The task force, established under the Undersecretary of War for Personnel and Readiness, has 90 days to complete its assessment. The mandate includes reviewing professors, administrators, and curriculum to ensure all content centers on national security, strategy, history, and what Hegseth called “overall excellence.”
In 2022, academic pressure led to discussion within some branches about dropping the use of “sir” and “ma’am” to avoid what officials described as potential misgendering.
Hegseth said those standards would not carry over to the War Department’s own institutions. He stated the task force will confirm that courses match “President Trump’s promise to the American people” and ensure that rising officers are prepared to “dominate the battlefield.”
The review does not extend to civilian universities, which Hegseth separately criticized as “laboratories for anti-American indoctrination.” He said the distinction is deliberate: military schools, unlike civilian ones, cannot be allowed to operate outside the warrior ethos.
“We have a duty to ensure that our professional military education develops real leaders,” he said.
