Key Highlights
- Trump has targeted federal funding at numerous universities in a broad push to force educational institutions to align themselves with the administration’s worldviews, while alleging that US universities promote antisemitism and leftist ideology. Harvard has been a focal point in the administration’s fight with higher education, and earlier this week Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that he would be seeking $1bn in damages from the university over allegations that it enabled antisemitism.
- Harvard’s president, Alan Garber, has pushed back against those claims in the past year, rejecting those allegations as false and calling the administration’s pressure campaign an attack on academic freedom. Hegseth has railed against what he describes as wokeness, sought to end diversity programs, and postured himself as an aggressive, brash defense secretary.
- On Friday, Hegseth framed Harvard as a radical leftist institution that sought to undermine the US armed forces.“Too many faculty members openly loathe our military; they cast our armed forces in.
- a negative light and squelch anyone who challenges their leftist political leanings,” said Hegseth, who made no mention of the master’s degree in public policy he earned from Harvard’s John F Kennedy school of government.“With some exceptions,” Hegseth added, “the Ivy League as a whole has pervasive institutional bias and a lack of viewpoint diversity, including the coddling of toxic ideologies that undercuts our mission.”“That is why, in two weeks’ time, components of all of our departments – army, navy and air force – will evaluate all existing graduate programs for active-duty service members at all Ivy League universities and other civilian universities,” he added. The Pentagon’s focus on “building lethality”, Hegseth also said, “no longer includes spending millions of dollars on expensive universities that actively undercut our mission and undercut our country”. The Harvard alumnus ended his video message with: “We train warriors, not wokesters.
- Harvard: good riddance.”Hegseth’s attack on Harvard has been a theme of his political rhetoric for years.
