Washington — The Defense Department is considering its most sweeping remake of military higher education, according to an unreleased draft memorandum obtained by CBS News that would abolish civilian tenure and overhaul course offerings at the military service academies and senior war colleges that educate future military officers.
The memorandum, labeled “Refocusing the Military Service Academies and Senior Service College on Warfighter Education,” would direct institutions like the U.S. Military Academy at West Point to eliminate the granting of tenure to civilian faculty. It would also launch a comprehensive review of the curriculum taught at all service academies and war colleges.
The memorandum has not yet been approved by top Pentagon officials, and it’s unclear when it could be finalized and distributed or how it would be implemented.
It would apply to West Point, the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis and the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado, along with institutions like the Naval War College in Rhode Island and the Army War College in Pennsylvania. More than 10,000 people are enrolled in those institutions.
“Tenure is a construct designed to protect academic freedom within universities. In practice, it more often leads to stagnation, complacency, and inflexibility,” the memorandum states. “It contributes to curriculum that drifts from the mission of educating our warfighters to the research priorities of the tenured academics.”
Beyond civilian faculty employment, the draft proposal reaches into the classroom itself. It directs Defense Department officials to conduct a comprehensive, “line-by-line” review of every course taught at the military academies and senior service colleges, measuring each against a single standard: whether it directly advances “tactical operational or strategic warfighting.”
Courses determined to be non-essential or “ideologically driven” would be slated for elimination. It’s not clear what criteria the Pentagon will use to determine what academic instructions are non-essential or how a course is driven by ideology.
The Pentagon declined to comment when contacted by CBS News for this story.
U.S. military officials who spoke to CBS News on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly said the policy proposal is being driven by Tim Dill, the assistant defense secretary for manpower and reserve affairs. A former Army Green Beret officer, Dill previously served as national security adviser to Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas.
The U.S. military officials told CBS News that the memorandum would still need to be approved by Anthony Tata, a West Point graduate and under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness. Sign-off is also needed from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the former Fox News host and National Guard veteran.
While the memo declares that the practice of granting tenure would be abolished “effective immediately,” it also gives Tata 60 days to issue implementation guidance for ending civilian tenure and initiate the curriculum review.
The proposal would mark the latest step in Hegseth’s campaign to reshape military education. Since he took office, the Pentagon has directed service academies to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion instruction, rescind faculty appointments and scrutinize library collections for books addressing race and gender.
The Pentagon has also cut ties with some graduate education opportunities at civilian universities such as Harvard, Princeton, Columbia and Yale, which Hegseth claims are “factories of anti-American resentment.”
When Hegseth convened generals and admirals in Quantico, Virginia, last year, he told them the Pentagon would be reviewing standards in “every service, every unit, every schoolhouse and every form of professional military education.” One of the memos issued after his speech directed a 60-day review of military education and training standards. The Pentagon has not released any results publicly from that review.
Unlike those earlier initiatives, however, the new proposal reaches beyond curriculum and into the employment structure of military higher education itself.
The majority of faculty at the Army’s West Point academy are active-duty officers, with civilians representing a minority of the staff members. In 1992, Congress enacted a federal law directing the service academies and senior war colleges to boost their civilian academic ranks.
Tenure for civilian faculty members at the service academies has been in place for decades and has repeatedly been defended by academy leaders before Congress as essential to attracting highly qualified scholars who could otherwise pursue careers at civilian universities.
During a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing last year, Lt. Gen. Steven Gilland, West Point’s superintendent, told lawmakers that tenure provided civilian professors opportunities to develop within their academic disciplines while helping West Point to recruit and retain talented faculty.
Vice Adm. Yvette Davids, then superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy, similarly described tenure as “a wonderful recruiting tool” that attracts “the best and the brightest” and encourages them to remain at the academy.
When questioned by Republican Sen. Rick Scott of Florida and Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama about whether tenured civilian professors could be dismissed, Gilland answered yes.
“There is a process,” he said, explaining that West Point has the authority to remove tenured faculty members.
Davids likewise testified that the Naval Academy follows established human resources procedures, while Air Force Academy Superintendent Lt. Gen. Tony D. Bauernfeind told senators that civilian and military personnel alike can be removed if they fail to meet institutional standards.
A West Point faculty manual from 2005 states that civilian faculty can be terminated for misconduct, financial exigency or substantial modification of a program, and the academy can only decline to appoint them for adequate cause.
For decades, the service academies have sought to balance their dual roles as military institutions and accredited universities. Academy leaders have repeatedly told Congress that rigorous scholarship, civilian faculty expertise and exposure to complex questions help prepare officers for the uncertainty of modern warfare.
But the new memorandum, if adopted, seems to reject that balance as it argues that every aspect of military education should be judged by one standard: whether it directly contributes to “tactical, operational, and strategic combat leadership.”
The draft proposal also comes after West Point declined to appeal a federal judge’s order temporarily suspending enforcement of a policy that required civilian faculty to seek advance approval before engaging in many forms of public speech, including publishing opinion essays and participating in interviews, according to The Washington Post.
Tim Bakken, West Point’s longest-serving law professor, filed his lawsuit against the academy in Manhattan federal court last September.
U.S. District Judge Cathy Seibel issued a preliminary injunction preventing West Point from enforcing the policy against civilian professors while the lawsuit proceeds. The order also prohibits the academy from restricting Bakken from sharing his personal viewpoints with students.
“The mission of the US military academies is to win wars through strength and equally important, through strength, to prevent wars from beginning,” Bakken told CBS News in a statement. “One of the best ways to do this is to ensure there is freedom to analyze and discuss any issue so that these students who go on to become generals and admirals will be prepared to make the best possible decisions in critical matters that affect our nation.”
