This piece is a developing story. This article will reflect all new information that becomes available.
Update: Sunday, March 1, 9:20 p.m.: According to a list released by the Department of Defense, Cornell University's Senior Service College Fellowships are not slated to be cut for the 2026-2027 school year. All other Ivy League institutions were included on the list except Dartmouth and the University of Pennsylvania.
The list, released on Friday, lists cuts to the Senior Service College Fellowships specifically, and did not mention other partnerships between Cornell and the Pentagon.
Senior Service College Fellowships provide funding for high-level military officials to study national security policy and strategy in an academic setting, according to The United States Army War College’s website.
Potential “new partnerships” intended to replace previous partnerships with Ivy League and other elite universities announced by the Pentagon include conservative institutions such as Liberty University and Hillsdale College, as well as public universities like the University of North Carolina, Arizona State University and the University of Michigan.
When reached for comment, a Pentagon spokesperson referred The Sun to its statement on Senior Service College Fellowships, which stated the policy change “will not impact any Service members or [DOD] civilians currently enrolled in the affected programs.”
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth ordered the cancellation of military attendance at Ivy League and other elite universities, starting in the 2026-2027 academic year, in a video released Friday afternoon on X, formerly Twitter.
Hegseth said the change would affect “Princeton, Columbia, MIT, Brown, Yale, and many others.” Though Cornell was not explicitly mentioned, Cornell was on a preliminary list of institutions at risk of losing military tuition assistance eligibility, according to information originally reported by CNN earlier this month.
Hegseth previously canceled all professional military education, certificate programs and fellowships with Harvard on Feb 6.
In the Friday video, Hegseth said that he made the decision because the American military has “been poisoned from within by a class of so-called ‘elite universities,’ who have abused their privilege and access to this department and utterly betrayed their purpose.”
"Cornell University has proudly educated active-duty military and veterans since its founding and is the only Ivy League institution designated a Purple Heart University for supporting veterans injured in combat,” a University spokesperson wrote to The Sun.
“In addition to a robust ROTC program, Cornell has long enrolled senior military officers in graduate business, law, and engineering programs. We remain committed to educating senior military officers, who are valued members of our campus community," the spokesperson wrote.
Hegseth, who attended Princeton as an undergraduate and Harvard for his master’s in public policy, added that Ivy League universities have “gorged themselves on a trust fund of American taxpayer dollars only to become factories of anti-American sentiment and military disdain,” while teaching curriculum that “seeks to hollow out their warrior ethos and replace it with a creed of globalist submission.”
This order follows Hegseth's move to bar the use of military tuition assistance for graduate programs at dozens of top universities. A preliminary list compiled by the U.S. Army classified Cornell as being at “moderate to high risk” of losing eligibility due to alleged “bias” against the military.
Military tuition assistance provides service members up to $4,500 a year to help cover the costs of graduate-level education. Then, the Tuition Assistance Top-Up program works to bridge the gap. It covers the remaining tuition costs that exceed $4,500 at more expensive universities. More than 230,000 service members utilize the assistance provided by these programs.
Undergraduate programs, ROTC and the GI bill will be unaffected.
Atticus Johnson is a member of the Class of 2028 in the College of Arts and Sciences. He is a senior writer for the News department and can be reached at ajohnson@cornellsun.com.
