Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Monday ordered a sweeping overhaul of the U.S. military’s professional education system to eliminate what he said were “decades of academic drift” and restore a focus on combat readiness and warfighting skills.
Under the new guidelines, the Pentagon will evaluate military schools by a single standard: “Does this program forge leaders who will win America’s wars?”
Mr. Hegseth on Monday was at the Naval War College at Newport, Rhode Island, where he said the new directive will eliminate “ideological distractions in favor of joint warfighting mastery.”
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For decades, he said, senior military leaders at senior service colleges have debated “grand theories in sunlit seminar rooms” and drafted lengthy papers on international norms.
“But this morning, we strip away the comfortable veneer of academic tradition and confront unyielding elemental truths,” Mr. Hegseth said. “The fundamental duty of the armed forces of the United States of America is to ensure America’s victory in war. Full stop.”
Under the new policy, lifetime tenure and emeritus status for newly arrived civilian faculty members will shift to three-year, performance-based contracts evaluated on teaching effectiveness and national security research, officials said.
The directive also establishes the position of “warfighter chair” at all senior service colleges that will be filled with high-performing colonels or lieutenant colonels who are fresh from operational deployments. Their mission is to inject real-time combat lessons into the academic calendar, officials said.
Mr. Hegseth said too many faculty members at schools like the Naval War College and the Army War College spend their careers writing and teaching about the past rather than focusing on the military’s future needs.
“It is comfortable to teach the same doctrines, ones formed decades ago, but in the profession of arms, nostalgia is fatal,” he said. “History has repeatedly shown that you can never win by fighting the last war.”
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