For years, the radical Left has treated America’s civilian universities as laboratories for anti-American indoctrination — peddling “whiteness studies,” seminars on gender-based genocide, and even the celebration of Hamas. On Thursday, War Secretary Pete Hegseth made it clear that toxic “woke” rot ends at the doors of the Department of War.
Hegseth delivered a blistering ultimatum to the military’s educational bureaucracy, directing the Undersecretary of War for Personnel and Readiness to establish an immediate task force. Hegseth announced a 90-day “scorched earth” assessment of the nation’s senior service colleges, including the Army War College and National Defense University. The mission? To “rip out” the DEI playbook and return the focus to what actually matters: lethality, meritocracy, and winning wars.
“Seminars on genocide through the analytic of gender. Hmm, sounds interesting,” Hegseth mused. “So-called ‘whiteness studies.’ Courses that celebrate the history of Hamas, where a professor calls Islamist militants and their attacks ‘astounding’ and ‘incredible.’ Graduate studies that focus on the abolition of law enforcement. Classes on leadership that are just recycled garbage from the old DEI, diversity, equity, and inclusion playbook: These are examples of classes that our leaders in our civilian colleges and universities too often celebrate.”
“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,” he declared. “It degrades our readiness. It’s a risk to our forces. And it undermines our mission of peace through strength.”
He continued:
At the Department of War, we have a duty to ensure that our professional military education develops real leaders, warfighters who dominate into the future. We’re committed to making our own senior service colleges maintain the highest of standards, that those places align with President Trump’s commitment to the American people, that our military will remain the strongest in history.
That’s why I’m directing the Undersecretary of War for Personnel and Readiness to establish a task force effective immediately. The mission of that task force is to evaluate our senior service colleges, where we educate our own. Think places like the Army War College, or National Defense University, the Naval War College, Marine Corps University, or the Air War College, where our senior officers go to continue their education.
We’re going to ensure that the professors, administrators, and curriculum of those institutions are focused on national security, strategy, history, and overall excellence, confirm that high standards and meritocracy are forefront, and make sure that what we’ve seen in our civilian institutions never surface in our military education institutions.
Trust me, I’ve heard the stories. I know some of our own senior service colleges, some of those that I just listed, have similar courses and similar ideologies. We need to rip ‘em out, and we’re going to.
This task force will have 90 days to assess whether our senior service colleges — the list I just provided — are actually effective. They’re going to identify any deficiencies and make sure they’re focused on core national security issues.
Professional Military Education should produce warfighters and leaders—not wokesters.
That’s why we are establishing a Task Force to evaluate our Senior Service Colleges and ensure the focus is where it belongs.
No distractions. Just warfighting. pic.twitter.com/zQhUA2bk9I
— Secretary of War Pete Hegseth (@SecWar) March 13, 2026
The move is a sharp course correction from the Lloyd Austin era under the Biden administration, where the Pentagon became a playground for Critical Race Theory and gender-neutral linguistics. In 2021, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) exposed hundreds of whistleblower complaints from service members forced into “privilege walks” and told that the U.S. military was a “fundamentally racist” institution. In 2022, academics even pressured the Marines to drop “sir” and “ma’am” to avoid “misgendering.”
Hegseth’s directive signals a total rejection of those priorities. By targeting the curriculum and the administrators of senior service colleges, the War Department — a name restored to emphasize the military’s true purpose — is shifting back to the warrior ethos. Hegseth emphasized that if the military is pulling officers out of civilian universities because they have become too “woke,” the military’s own institutions must be beyond reproach.
The Secretary’s mandate is clear: the task force will evaluate whether these schools are effectively producing critical thinkers grounded in the principles of the Founding Fathers. No more “white fragility” readings; no more “abolition of law enforcement” studies. As Hegseth noted, the focus is now on ensuring those rising to the highest ranks are prepared to dominate the battlefield.
Under the new leadership, the era of treating diversity and inclusion as a “warfighting imperative” is over.
