Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s recent decision to end the Pentagon’s academic partnerships with more than 20 universities and other institutions, including Harvard and other Ivy League schools, has provoked not a little alarmed commentary. In a Washington Post op-ed earlier this month, Big Tech accountability advocate J.B. Branch and retired U.S. Air Force Major Allan E. Cameron argued that “U.S. military officers need to go to Harvard,” and that retreating from America’s flagship research and policy institutions is “a strategic retreat.”
An op-ed in The Hill by Northwestern emeritus law professor Steven Lubet quoted a former Navy SEAL who argued that “Hegseth is cutting off outside sources that provide information that is unavailable anywhere else, and invaluable to the successful prosecution of modern warfare.”
