{"id":81792,"date":"2026-11-13T16:08:23","date_gmt":"2026-11-13T16:08:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/conflicts\/81792\/"},"modified":"2026-11-13T16:08:23","modified_gmt":"2026-11-13T16:08:23","slug":"brown-naval-war-college-partnership-ended-after-hegseths-announcement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/conflicts\/81792\/","title":{"rendered":"Brown\u2013Naval War College partnership ended after Hegseth’s announcement"},"content":{"rendered":"

PROVIDENCE \u2013 In Newport on Monday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told Naval War College faculty and students<\/a> he had ended their longstanding partnership with Brown University<\/a>, warning that the military\u2019s education system has become \u201cdangerously civilianized.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hegseth said he terminated a memorandum of understanding between the two institutions last month.<\/p>\n

But his remarks \u201ccaught everyone off guard,\u201d according to Dr. Adam C. Levine, who has facilitated the partnership for 10 years on Brown\u2019s behalf.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt caught Brown University off guard. It caught everyone at the Naval War College off guard,\u201d Levine, a professor of emergency medicine and international and public affairs at Brown, said in an interview. \u201cNone of them had any idea he was going to say that.\u201d<\/p>\n

An email and other documents obtained by the Globe show the Naval War College discontinued the initiative centered on improving distribution of humanitarian aid on Tuesday, the day after Hegseth\u2019s speech.<\/p>\n

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Under Hegseth, the Pentagon has taken dramatic actions to alter the military\u2019s relationship with higher education, as he has decried some of the nation\u2019s leading colleges and universities for promoting what he has called \u201cwokeness and weakness.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

A policy that took hold this school year barred members of the military from attending fellowships at Brown, as well as Columbia and Harvard universities, among other elite institutions that Hegseth, himself a graduate of both Princeton and Harvard<\/a>, said have become \u201cfactories of anti-American resentment.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

In his Newport address<\/a>, Hegseth announced 33 directives centered on overhauling the nation\u2019s war colleges \u2013 instructions, he said, that would stamp out \u201cdestructive ideologies\u201d and \u201cthe worst pathologies of contemporary civilian higher education\u201d while promoting a \u201cresolute warrior ethos.\u201d’<\/p>\n

Speaking of the Naval War College\u2019s work with Brown, Hegseth said, \u201cThe only place more stridently ideological in one direction, more than Columbia or Harvard, is Brown. It was long past due to end that relationship.\u201d<\/p>\n

For a decade, the partnership<\/a> had brought together professionals from both schools at an annual symposium to collaborate on how civilians and military personnel work with one another to coordinate humanitarian assistance in war zones and after natural disasters. <\/p>\n

Most recently, in May, the workshop attracted about 100 high-level US military commanders, as well as officials from multiple foreign militaries and representatives from United Nations agencies, Levine said.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have the chance for someone from Doctors Without Borders to sit next to somebody from the U.S. Marines and have a conversation with each other, and it\u2019s probably the only place in the world where that has been able to happen because it\u2019s a neutral space that folks can collaborate with each other,\u201d Levine said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll sorts of ideas come out,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

The effort has produced numerous research articles and<\/a> studies, and more importantly, has real and meaningful impacts for people facing dire situations in the United States and around the world, according to Levine. <\/p>\n

Part of the work involves finding ways to make sure warfare follows legal restrictions and treaties, to reduce impact on civilians, he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cTo call that \u2018woke\u2019 is a true misunderstanding of what civil-military humanitarian coordination entails,\u201d Levine said.<\/p>\n

Former students who attended Hegseth\u2019s speech at the Naval War College were shocked and upset, said Rose McDermott, a professor of international relations and political science at Brown, who said she teaches her students \u201chow to win a war.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s congratulating himself for destroying this thing that has been really valuable,\u201d McDermott said.<\/p>\n

Asked about the end of the partnership, Joshua L. Wick, a spokesperson for the Pentagon, referred to the department\u2019s February memorandum<\/a> about barring military personnel from attending fellowship programs at select schools, including Brown. <\/p>\n

\u201cBeyond this we don\u2019t have anything additional to share,\u201d Wick wrote in an email. <\/p>\n

The Pentagon did not respond to further questions about when the nonbinding agreement with Brown was terminated.<\/p>\n

The collaboration is one of \u201cmultiple layers of partnership\u201d Brown has shared with the Naval War College over the past 15 years, including \u201ccollaborative research and teaching across the institutions,\u201d according to Brian Clark, a spokesperson for Brown.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur understanding based on that termination notice and the statements made during Monday\u2019s event at the Naval War College is that these productive collaborations will not continue,\u201d Clark wrote in an email on Thursday. \u201cOur hope is that there is opportunity for these partnerships to resume at some point moving forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, Brown has other affiliations with the military, including agreements to allow ROTC participation by undergraduate students, Clark said. The university has also \u201cmore than quadrupled\u201d its number of veterans enrolled as undergraduates in recent years, he said.<\/p>\n

Last year, Brown reached an agreement with the Trump administration<\/a> to restore $50 million in federal research funding. Clark said the memorandum terminated by Hegseth is a separate matter, not connected to that agreement.<\/p>\n

John N. Friedman, dean of the Watson School of International and Public Affairs at Brown, wrote in an email Brown\u2019s collaborations with the military have been beneficial.<\/p>\n

\u201cWelcoming active-duty members of the military, veterans, and ROTC students to campus, and working together on research and teaching, is critical to advancing our collective understanding and impact on military-related issues,\u201d Friedman wrote.<\/p>\n

Brown\u2019s ties to the Naval War College have been especially valuable for academics, as military personnel provide important perspectives for their work, according to Robert Blair, an associate professor of political science and international and public affairs. <\/p>\n

For all of the Trump administration\u2019s complaints that universities are out of touch with reality, the decision to end the relationship between Brown and the Naval War College is ironic, Blair said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese were the sorts of mechanisms that would really force you to think hard about the practical implications of \u2026 conceptual, theoretical work that you were doing,\u201d Blair said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf anything, it\u2019s probably only going to exacerbate the problem,\u201d Blair added.<\/p>\n

McDermott has already seen tangible consequences of the Pentagon\u2019s withdrawal from the Ivy League. <\/p>\n

After Hegseth terminated the military\u2019s fellowship program for senior officers with Brown and other top-tier schools, two of McDermott\u2019s students opted to go elsewhere because the military would not pay for them to attend Brown, while a third student quit the US Air Force altogether to pursue a PhD at Brown, McDermott said.<\/p>\n

Other ramifications are subtle but real: Military and non-military students provide each other a \u201creciprocal education \u2026 that is not necessarily measurable, but that is quite profound over time,\u201d McDermott said. Some of her undergraduate students have gone on to join the US armed forces because they were inspired by military fellows and students on campus, she said.<\/p>\n

McDermott\u2019s father spent his career in the US Navy and was at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, when it was attacked, she said. The classes she teaches focus on topics such as border surveillance and battle strategy \u2013 exactly the training military officers should get, she said. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe very first day of class, the very first thing I say is, \u2018If you want a class that says, \u201cPeace and love and the bombs will go away,\u201d go take a class in anthropology,\u2019\u201d McDermott said.<\/p>\n

To be clear, McDermott doesn\u2019t support war \u2013 the ongoing one in Iran \u201cis a disaster,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

\u201cBut if you\u2019re in a war, you\u2019re better off winning than losing, and you better know how to do that, right?\u201d McDermott said. \u201cSo that\u2019s how I teach it, and I don\u2019t see any part of that that\u2019s \u2018woke.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Christopher Gavin can be reached at christopher.gavin@globe.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PROVIDENCE \u2013 In Newport on Monday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told Naval War College faculty and students he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":81793,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[2823,40548,227,2826,38823,61,275,3009,40,3011,11016,3014,331,259,623,7726],"class_list":["post-81792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-military-defense","tag-arlington","tag-arlington-virginia","tag-diplomacy","tag-horizontal","tag-international-landmark","tag-military","tag-pete-hegseth","tag-photography","tag-politics","tag-politics-and-government","tag-secretary-of-defense","tag-talking","tag-the-pentagon","tag-u-s-defense","tag-usa","tag-washington-dc"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@conflicts\/117610001795065221","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/conflicts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/conflicts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/conflicts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/conflicts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/conflicts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81792"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/conflicts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81792\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/conflicts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/conflicts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/conflicts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/conflicts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}