As President Donald Trump and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth work to restore the focus of America’s military on lethality and warfighting, one of their major tasks has been to reform the institutions that train our military leaders. In recent news, Secretary Hegseth has decreedthat military officers may no longer attend fellowships or government-sponsored degree programs at Harvard University, and he is apparently looking to expand that ban list beyond Harvard into colleges and universities nationwide that teach the desirability of toxic policies such as Marxism, DEI, and the myth of anthropogenic climate change. The rationale here is simple. America’s military exists to close with and destroy our nation’s enemies, and for no other reason. The toxic brew of politicized beliefs taught at the Ivy League institutions of 2026 detracts from and degrades that military mission, and they cannot be tolerated in uniform.
That’s a great start, but there is much more to do on this front. Perhaps no task is more important in this vein than reforming the military’s Senior Service Colleges (also known as War Colleges). Our War Colleges have lost their way, as they each strive to be a sort of government-run Ivy League university instead of a training ground for lethal strategic warfighters. As a graduate of one of those War Colleges, I cannot emphasize enough just how important reform of these vital institutions is to our nation’s defense.
For the uninitiated, there are six War Colleges. They are: (i) the National War College (Fort McNair, Washington, DC); (ii) the Dwight D. Eisenhower School for National Security & Resource Strategy (Fort McNair, Washington, DC); (iii) the Army War College (Carlisle Barracks, PA); (iv) the Naval War College (Newport, RI); (v) the Air War College (Maxwell Air Force Base, AL); and (vi) the Marine Corps War College (Quantico, VA). These War Colleges serve to train America’s senior military leaders to assume future positions of strategic importance.
The students are generally promotable lieutenant colonels (or promotable Navy and Coast Guard commanders) or full colonels (or Navy and Coast Guard captains). The schools also admit senior civilians from across the federal government. The National War College and the Eisenhower School are both “joint” schools (i.e., students are from all military services), and the other colleges are service-specific, although they too admit a number of students from the other military services. The War Colleges also admit students from allied foreign militaries.