Last Friday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that, starting next school year, the Department of Defense will cut sponsorships for active duty U.S. military personnel to attend graduate programs and fellowships at Brown and other elite institutions. The cancellations affect 93 fellowships at Brown, Princeton, the Brookings Institution, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, among others — respected institutions that Hegseth calls “woke.” “No longer will we sit back and treat these woke breeding grounds of toxic indoctrination as valid centers of so-called intellectual curiosity,” Hegseth said in a video released on X. Not only is Hegseth’s characterization of Brown and other elite institutions incorrect, but the policy he claims will protect our military will weaken it — insulating service members from the intellectual rigor that leadership demands.
Hegseth accuses Brown and institutions like it of trading “true intellectual rigor for radical dogma” and “sacrificing free expression for the suffocating confines of leftist ideology.” But when one of the new criteria for participation in the Senior Service College Fellowship program is “minimal public expressions in opposition” to the Department of Defense, each of Hegseth’s accusations seem like a confession of the department’s own stifled ideological environment. Thus, Hegseth is perpetuating the very indoctrination he purportedly seeks to combat, filling our military ranks with conservative snowflakes.
Brown is not woke. While students here are overwhelmingly liberal, the University has acted impartially — it has punished violations of the Code of Student Conduct, recognized the importance of freedom of expression and created initiatives to promote dialogue. As a moderate democrat, I have proudly and publicly expressed my opinions on a campus that overwhelmingly does not agree with me. These experiences have made me more thoughtful and helped me to develop a personal ethos informed by passionate debate. In contrast, it appears the “war fighters” of Trump’s America have become so sensitive that the hypothetical leftist who sits next to them in class poses a serious threat.
Hegseth’s announcement came on the heels of a similar policy targeting Harvard. To justify that decision, Hegseth said, “In our line of work, ideological automatons are useless. We need leaders who can wrestle with multiple viewpoints, professionals who can think critically and independently to solve important questions.” These are precisely the skills a Brown education cultivates.
This year, the University offered 2,839 courses, ranging in topic from IAPA 0800: “National Security Decision Making” to GNSS 1550: “Queer Asias.” While I readily admit that the Open Curriculum has its limits — particularly for students looking to build themselves an echo chamber — for curious Brown students, the variety of options provides a unique educational path that takes different perspectives into account. Our soldiers would only benefit from this rigorous intellectual environment and from being immersed in a civilian environment that is politically different from that of the military. And we, as civilian students, likewise benefit from their presence, which is likely one reason the University has made supporting veterans a top priority. Learning to have dialogue across differences is a critical part of a good education.
Though the Pentagon claims that it “will no longer invest in institutions that fail to sharpen our leaders’ warfighting capabilities,” universities such as Brown remain a crucial part of our nation’s armed forces recruitment pipeline. The University participates in both the Reserve Officer Training Corps and the Health Professional Scholarship Program, which remain unaffected by the announcements. These civilian programs, nationally, are responsible for the commission of more than half of the army’s officers and 80% of the military’s doctors. The military still needs “woke” universities, perhaps more than universities need our coddled military.
The administration’s termination of Brown and other similar institutions’ participation in the fellowship program is yet another indication of the echo chamber-like atmosphere that has begun to take hold within our nation’s armed forces. But, as Stalin learned the hard way, this will only harm the military’s ability to protect our country. Such an intellectual bubble paints distorted pictures of reality, creates consensus where none exists and harms the recruitment of competent officials.
President Trump would be wise to reverse this foolish policy and return America’s brave service men and women to the best classrooms so that they can continue serving our country with distinction.
Tas Rahman ’26 can be reached at tasawwar_rahman@brown.edu. Please send responses to this opinion to letters@browndailyherald.com and other op-eds to opinions@browndailyherald.com.
Tas Rahman is an Opinion Editor and a member of the Editorial Page Board. He hails from Detroit, Michigan and is concentrating in Computational Biology and Judaic Studies. In his free time, you can find Tas hiking and reading the Atlantic (alongside the Herald).
