The U.S. Department of Defense may ban tuition assistance for active troops enrolled in graduate programs at a list of schools that includes Georgetown University, according to a memo leaked Feb. 13.
If banned, active military personnel will not be able to matriculate in graduate programs at Georgetown and will be unable to receive tuition assistance at the university. The decision follows a series of attacks on elite universities by the Trump administration, including withholding funding and launching investigations.
In a Feb. 6 video posted to X, U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced an evaluation of civilian universities by the military, saying the Department of Defense will determine the usefulness of their graduate programs.
“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,” Hegseth said in the video. “The goal is to determine whether or not they actually deliver cost-effective strategic education for future senior leaders when compared to public universities and our military graduate programs.”
Hegseth also criticized diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts at Ivy League universities in the video, saying the programs hold biases antithetical to the Department of Defense’s mission.
“With some exceptions, 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 right here in this building,” Hegseth said.
Georgetown maintains a commitment to DEI, recently reaffirming support for such programs, although the university has altered DEI language on some of its websites in the past year.
Other schools on the list include other Washington, D.C. universities, such as American University and George Washington University, and Georgetown’s peer institutions, including Brown University and the University of Pennsylvania. It is unknown when a final decision will be made, though Hegseth said the review will begin around Feb. 20.
