War Secretary Pete Hegseth went after the institutions that train America’s future generals on Monday. He unveiled 33 new directives that he says will strip away “relics of 19th century academia” and refocus the nation’s senior war colleges on one mission: winning wars.
Hegseth spoke to about 700 students and faculty at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. He called the reforms “a complete overhaul” of the Department of War’s senior service colleges, meant “to forge leaders of unmatched competence, sound moral judgment, and resolute warrior ethos.”
“For years, our war college mission statements have been choked with gauzy academic platitudes,” Hegseth said. “The word ‘win’ is entirely absent. The word ‘defeat’ does not appear.”
The changes are laid out in an eight-page memorandum. They follow a 90-day review that Hegseth ordered in March of the Pentagon’s six senior service colleges: the Army, Naval, Air Force and Marine Corps war colleges, the National Defense University and the National War College. At the time, Hegseth declared that “Professional Military Education should produce warfighters and leaders—not wokesters.”
In the new memo, he wrote that “academic drift” had “traded combat readiness for theory and indulged ideological distractions over practical warfighting.”
The 80-page written thesis, long a centerpiece of the war college year, will be replaced with wargames assisted by artificial intelligence and oral defense boards that test officers under pressure. Newly hired civilian faculty will no longer be eligible for lifetime tenure or emeritus status. They will work on renewable three-year contracts tied to teaching performance and national security research instead.
The directives also:
- create “warfighter chair” positions, filled by O-5 and O-6 commanders fresh from deployments
- expand classified facilities for instruction
- direct the Pentagon to examine accreditation options that fit military missions
“One of the most alarming findings of our comprehensive review was that our war colleges actively avoid the rigorous study of recent American strategic failures,” Hegseth said. “Faculty dismissed them as sore subjects or politically sensitive topics.”
He saved some of his sharpest words for his hosts. Hegseth said the review found “a stubborn undercurrent of passive-aggressive institutional resistance” at the Naval War College. “There are those who believe that they can hide behind academic, civilian academic tenure, and regional accreditation mandates to wait out President Trump’s term in office,” he said.
About 70% of the Naval War College’s faculty are civilians. Hegseth pointed to the school’s 12-year partnership with Brown University and said he directed the Pentagon to end it last month. He also criticized what he called “frivolous research” into gender identity and climate change.
Still, he praised the college for running two AI-assisted wargames this year.
The overhaul is the latest step in Hegseth’s campaign to remake military education. In February, he cut off Department of War attendance at elite schools including Princeton, Columbia, MIT, Brown and Yale.
A small group of protesters near the Newport Pell Bridge held signs calling for Hegseth’s impeachment. A Naval War College spokesman said school leaders would review the directives against the existing curriculum.
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