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Hegseth cranks up pressure on US war colleges
By Alex Nitzberg
Published March 13, 2026
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has announced a task force to evaluate senior service colleges to ensure they are not tainted by woke ideology and offer quality education.
"Professional Military Education should produce warfighters and leaders—not wokesters," he asserted in a post on X.
"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," the post adds.
War Sec. Pete Hegseth arrives for the inaugural Americas Counter Cartel Conference at the U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) headquarters in Doral, Florida, on March 5, 2026. (Eva Marie UZCATEGUI / AFP via Getty Images)
Hegseth's post includes a video message in which he said, "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," he explained.
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President Donald Trump and US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth look on during the "Shield of the Americas" Summit at Trump National Doral in Miami, Florida, March 7, 2026. (Saul Loeb / AFP via Getty Images)
He indicated that the War Department will "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 … 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 … are actually effective."
"And if we're pulling officers out of civilian universities because they're too woke, then we better make sure our own universities are prepared to do the task properly," he said.
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Hegseth's message came as the U.S. continues waging war against the Islamic Republic of Iran in conjunction with Israel.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/hegseth-cranks-up-pressure-us-war-colleges