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The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Virginia Tech are the first universities approved for the War Department's Senior Service College Fellowship program since Secretary Pete Hegseth ended military education partnerships with several Ivy League schools.
The 10-month fellowship serves as an alternative to traditional war colleges for senior military officers. The War Department said additional university partners will be announced later.
The approvals follow Hegseth's decision to bar military officers from attending graduate programs at Brown University, Harvard University, Princeton University and Yale University as part of an overhaul of professional military education, The Hill reported.
Hegseth, an alum of Princeton and the Harvard Kennedy School, said the Ivy League schools have become "woke breeding grounds of toxic indoctrination."
"We are deeply honored to participate in the Senior Service College Fellowship program," UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor Lee H. Roberts said in a statement.
"The program fits well within the context of our mission of service, and we take tremendous pride in our deep, longstanding relationship with the United States military."
Anthony J. Tata, undersecretary of war for personnel and readiness, said in a statement that the partnership is part of the department's effort to revitalize professional military education.
"Under the leadership of Secretary Hegseth, the Department of War is revitalizing Professional Military Education to ensure that our warfighters are prepared to achieve peace through strength," Tata said.
"We are proud to partner with Chancellor Roberts and UNC-Chapel Hill, a university with a rich tradition of service and support for our men and women in uniform, to develop a rigorous new Senior Service College Fellowship Program, equipping our officers to meet our critical national security mission."
UNC-Chapel Hill said its ties to the military date to its founding. University founder William Richardson Davie served as a commander in the Revolutionary War, and the campus hosted the U.S. Navy Pre-Flight School from 1942 to 1945, training nearly 20,000 cadets during World War II.
Three future presidents were connected to the program. Gerald Ford served as an instructor; George H.W. Bush trained as a cadet; and Ronald Reagan, who was a Hollywood actor at the time, visited the campus to provide morale-boosting entertainment.
The university serves about 1,200 military-affiliated students, more than 1,300 military dependents, and 150 ROTC cadets and midshipmen across three programs.
UNC-Chapel Hill is ranked No. 7 among Military Friendly Schools and No. 8 among Best Colleges for Veterans by U.S. News & World Report.
"Senior officers who come to Chapel Hill will contribute to nationally significant work in artificial intelligence, public policy, global security and more, and they will have access to one of the world’s great research universities," UNC-Chapel Hill Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Magnus Egerstedt said in a statement.
"We are ready to give them an education worthy of their service."
Virginia Tech will host senior officers from all military branches under the fellowship program.
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