Two Michigan colleges are on a list of new potential schools where the U.S. Department of Defense could send service members for higher education. The schools are Hillsdale College and the University of Michigan.
According to a memorandum from the Defense Department — which the Trump administration refers to as the Department of War — it’s eliminating certain Senior Service College (SSC) Fellowship programs at several institutions, including some Ivy Leagues, for the 2026-2027 academic year and beyond.
“This decisive change will ensure our leaders receive a more rigorous and relevant education to better prepare them for the complexities of modern warfare,” the memorandum read.
Harvard, Columbia, Yale, Princeton, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are among the institutions with cancelled fellowships. Several universities, including the University of Michigan and Hillsdale College, are on the proposed list of potential institutions meant to provide programs in place of those eliminated.
Derek Peterson, the Faculty Senate chair and a professor of History and African Studies at the University of Michigan, said the decision to include the university on the list is an “unlikely situation.” “U of M, historically, has been an institution that's identified with the left, broadly,” he said.
“But there's also been this countervailing tendency since Trump got elected,” Peterson continued, citing the university’s decision to dismantle its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs in response to executive orders from the Trump administration.
In a post on X, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the days of institutions subjecting “warriors” to “woke indoctrination” are over. “We demand that Senior Service Colleges work to sharpen our warfighters on genuine national security issues, not social justice activism,” Hegseth said.
Peterson said he and others who teach at U of M welcome and are happy to teach Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) students and military officers in training. “We need to have military officers in educational institutions like this if we're going to have a responsible, accountable officer corps heading up the most powerful military in the world,” he said.
Peterson said faculty has no particular information about what that training course is going to look like. “If Secretary Hegseth is willing to work with our already established curricular structures and expose military officers to the training we'd more generally offer to our students here about critical thinking, then I'm all in favor,” he said. But he said he would have concerns about the program if a separate curriculum is developed.
A U of M spokesperson said the university is establishing an expedited review process for military applicants who’ve been admitted to Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. “Michigan welcomes the opportunity to remove unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles as active-duty military leaders pursue an education,” the university said.
“If senior officers want serious education in the principles they swear to defend, Hillsdale College is exactly where they should be,” a spokesperson from Hillsdale College wrote in an emailed statement.
At the University of Michigan, Peterson said educating military officers is squarely within the mission of the public institution. “We want them to know about the violence of America's empire overseas. We want them to think about history and military conflict, not just as technical questions, but as human problems,” he said.
Editor's note: The University of Michigan is among Michigan Public's corporate sponsors.
