Hegseth attacks civilian-led education in Naval War College speech
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport on Monday, Nov. 9, 2026. (Photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Connor Burns/U.S. Naval War College)
As calls for his resignation and impeachment grow in Washington, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth came to the U.S. Naval War College in Newport Monday to announce a sweeping effort to strip military education of what he called its overly civilian influences.
“This morning we strip away the comfortable veneer of academic tradition,” he told an audience of 672 military personnel, students, faculty and civilian instructors inside Spruance Hall. “The fundamental duty of the armed forces of the United States is to ensure victory in war — full stop.”
Hegseth set the curriculum overhaul in motion in March, ordering a 90-day review of the Pentagon’s six senior service colleges, including the war colleges for the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines and the National Defense University and National War College. The Pentagon established a task force to scrutinize their faculty and curriculum to ensure the schools were producing warfighters rather than “social justice warriors.”
The result: an eight-page memo dated Monday containing 33 directives Hegseth said would rid the colleges of “relics of 19th century academia” and better prepare officers for modern warfare.
“In the profession of arms, nostalgia is fatal,” he said. “When our war college graduates walk across the stage and take command, their minds cannot be anchored on the strategic consensus of a vanished world.”
Hegseth presented an outline on some of the new guidelines during his 30-minute speech at the after which he promptly left the auditorium. He allowed no time for questions and answers with faculty and students and did not take questions from local media.
Under the new guidelines, the Pentagon will judge military education programs by a single standard: whether they produce leaders capable of winning wars.
The directives would make newly hired civilian faculty ineligible for lifetime tenure and emeritus status, instead putting them on renewable three-year contracts tied to teaching performance and national security research. They also call for new “warfighter chair” positions at senior service colleges, filled by high-performing colonels and lieutenant colonels who have held operational commands within the previous two years.
“Peace through strength is not achieved by comfortable consensus and business as usual approaches,” Hegseth said. “It is achieved by preparing our minds and our forces to wage war with such devastating speed, precision, and lethality that no adversary dares test American resolve — that’s deterrence.”
Hegseth’s central critique against America’s military colleges is that they have become too much like civilian universities, importing what he called the “worst pathologies” of higher education at the expense of their focus on victory in the battlefield.
He pointed to the Naval War College’s 12-year partnership with Brown University as an example, saying he directed the Pentagon to end the relationship last month.
“The only place more strikingly ideological in one direction — more than Columbia or Harvard — is Brown,” Hegseth, a graduate of Princeton and Harvard, said. “It was long past due to end that relationship.”
The partnership between the two schools dates to June 2014, when then-Naval War College President Rear Adm. Walter E. “Ted” Carter Jr. and Brown President Christina Paxson signed a research and education agreement with the university’s Watson Institute for International Studies. The agreement was intended to promote joint research and teaching, including programs in science-related fields tied to long-term national defense needs.
A spokesperson for Brown University did not immediately respond to request for comment on Hegseth’s statements.
Peace through strength is not achieved by comfortable consensus and business as usual approaches. It is achieved by preparing our minds and our forces to wage war with such devastating speed, precision, and lethality that no adversary dares test American resolve — that's deterrence.
– Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth in Naval War College speech
Hegseth praised several other military colleges for moving ahead with changes he wants to see across the system. He singled out the Marine Corps War College in Quantico, Virginia; Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania; and Eisenhower School at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C., for dismantling diversity, equity and inclusion offices and removing what he called “ideological jargon” from their curricula.
He also criticized what he described as “frivolous research” into gender identity and climate change, and raised concerns about civilian university partnerships in specialized military education programs.
Hegseth reserved some of his sharpest criticism for the Naval War College itself. The Pentagon’s review, he said, identified a “stubborn undercurrent of passive-aggressive institutional resistance” there.
About 70% of the Naval War College’s faculty are civilians. Lt. Cmdr. Seth Koenig, the college’s public affairs officer, said its president and provost would review the 33 directives against the existing curriculum before determining what changes might be necessary.
“A few things that (Hegseth) mentioned specifically on stage are not in direct conflict with anything we’re currently doing,” Koenig said.
The college’s academic programs include strategy and policy, national security affairs, theater security decision-making and joint military operations, Koenig said.
Calls for impeachment
Roughly three hours after Hegseth’s speech, U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, reintroduced articles of impeachment against the defense secretary over the war against Iran and other military operations in Yemen and Venezuela. Massie previously did so in September before the chamber adjourned.
A chorus of calls for Hegseth’s impeachment echoed along Hegseth’s route to the Naval War College as a group of about 30 to 40 protestors stood in the drizzly air near the Newport Pell Bridge off-ramp holding signs calling the secretary a “war criminal.” A group held up individual block letters to spell RESIGN.
“We know what he’s doing is not legal,” said Kristen Lancaster, 51, co-founder of the Lil’ Rhody Visibility Brigade and a retired federal worker who served six years in the Army. “There’s no oversight.”
Lancaster cited as examples the War in Iran, the renaming of the Department of Defense to the Department of War and double tap strikes in the Caribbean targeting survivors clinging to the wreckage of suspected drug boats. “As a veteran and former civil servant, I find it revolting,” she said.
We know what he’s doing is not legal. There’s no oversight.
– Kristen Lancaster, protester and a retired federal worker who served six years in the Army
Hegseth made no direct mention of Iran during his speech. He referred twice to Operation Epic Fury, the Pentagon’s name for the U.S. military campaign against Iran, as an example of modern warfare and the kind of operational experience he wants military colleges to prepare officers for.
“When joint headquarters in the Middle East faced intense combat operations during Operation Epic Fury, students were pulled directly from the war seminar rooms and deployed into the fight,” Hegseth said. “These officers stepped immediately into operational roles performing with devastating effectiveness and outperforming peers who had spent their academic year writing essays.”
Speaking to national outlets outside the Department of Defense’s plane at the Quonset State airport, he planned to hold a press conference Tuesday — his first since May 5 — on the impeachment calls.
Janine L. Weisman contributed to this report.
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