U.S. Military and Defense Policy

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has ordered the undersecretary of war for personnel and readiness to immediately establish a task force to evaluate the nation’s senior service colleges — including the Army War College, National Defense University, Naval War College, Marine Corps University and Air War College — for both educational effectiveness and what he calls "woke" ideological influence. In a video and post on X, Hegseth said "Professional Military Education should produce warfighters and leaders—not wokesters" and vowed to "rip" out courses and ideologies he likens to those in civilian universities. The task force has 90 days to assess whether these institutions are actually preparing officers for warfighting, a move that comes as the U.S. is fighting a major war against Iran alongside Israel. Hegseth framed the review as a follow‑through on pulling officers out of civilian universities he deems "too woke," insisting that internal military colleges must be "prepared to do the task properly." The order signals an escalation of the administration’s ideological purge campaign into core command‑level education, raising questions about academic freedom, the independence of professional military education, and whether curriculum changes will be driven by operational needs or political litmus tests.