Hegseth directs military service academies to immediately stop giving tenure to civilian professors

September 29, 2026 / 9:13 PM EDT / CBS News

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth signed a memo Tuesday directing institutions like the Military Academy at West Point and the Naval Academy in Annapolis to immediately stop granting tenure to civilian faculty, in Hegseth's latest change to military higher education.

"Tenure often leads to academic stagnation, faculty complacency, and institutional inability to adapt to emerging needs," he wrote. "Additionally, it contributes to curriculum that drifts from the mission of educating our warfighters to the research priorities of the tenured academics."

Hegseth said his goal is to "address the structural mechanisms that have allowed civilian academic norms to dilute our focus on lethality."

The move comes two months after CBS News exclusively reported that top Pentagon officials were considering ending civilian tenure at the military academies and launching a "line-by-line" review of their courses, eliminating classes that were judged to be "ideologically driven."

The service academies' teaching staff includes a mixture of active-duty officers and civilians. Only about 25% of the faculty at the Army's West Point academy are civilians, while the Naval Academy has roughly equal numbers of civilians and officers.

For decades, civilian faculty members have been granted tenure. During…

Original source: https://www.cbsnews.com/entertainment/