Having watched the Department of Justice lose scores of career prosecutors and reduce itself to taking applications over DMs and bringing dance photographers out of retirement, the Department of Defense decided to get in on the action by cutting future military lawyers off from the country’s best law schools. You could say the DOD saw the DOJ become a national laughing stock of legal incompetence and said, “hold my beer,” except you can’t imagine Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth putting down a beer that easily. Continuing the DOD’s performative anti-intellectual purge — which began with its public break with Harvard University — the Pentagon has informed active-duty service members that over 30 elite universities are now deemed “moderate to high risk” and therefore ineligible for DOD tuition assistance programs.
An email sent to Funded Legal Education Program and Unfunded Legal Education Program candidates from the Judge Advocate Recruiting Office informed the FLEP candidates — who receive funding for their education from the DOD — that if they have applied or been accepted by any of the schools on the list, they must withdraw their applications and reject their admissions. As the almost assuredly flustered JAG officials note, candidates need to do this immediately because “we know that some application deadlines have passed.” UFLEP candidates — who pay out of pocket for school while remaining active duty — are not being ordered to immediately withdraw, but are strongly encouraged to do so.
A screenshot posted online by @CounterIntel lays out the list, which is limited to private institutions. The email informs candidates that a list of banned public schools will follow… even further beyond application drop dead dates:
Tough break for Brown and Princeton who have pissed off the administration so much that it banned law schools that don’t even exist. Same goes for Carnegie Mellon University, MIT, Tufts, Johns Hopkins, Florida Institute of Technology, and Hawaii Pacific University. The London School of Economics somehow catches a wild transatlantic stray, probably because some middling civilian DOD official’s Cntrl+F search for “Trans” brought up the LSE. These schools probably ended up in this email because the JAG office copied and pasted the full list of Hegseth’s verboten grad schools into this list to without bothering to edit it.
The list includes the entire T14 except for the University of Chicago and the three public law schools among the top-tier — Berkeley, Michigan, and UVA. Presumably all three of the public schools will join the Trump administration’s banned list unless somehow BERKELEY of all schools escapes Hegseth’s bleary eyed, anti-woke gaze.
Remember when Columbia and Northwestern completely capitulated to the Trump administration? A lot of good that did them, as they still landed on this list. It’s almost as though negotiating with authoritarians has never worked in the history of ever.
The Defense Department hopes to spin this as taking away a handout to elite universities that teach “globalist and radical ideologies,” but these programs constitute investments in the military’s legal infrastructure and help the military recruit and retain the best and brightest prospective lawyers who will otherwise bolt for the private sector. If you’re a young officer realizing that your LSAT score could earn a Yale Law education, but the DOD relegates you to ASSLaw or Ave Maria — you’re bolting as soon as your time is up. America’s military thrives by enticing elite talent to serve in critical roles.
And, in time, this often spills out into the private sector when skilled JAG officers leave the military armed with elite degrees and practical experience.
Personally, I’ve written multiple recommendations on behalf of former students both to get into the FLEP program in the first place and then to get into top law schools. That the government would purge its future ranks of lawyers with elite resumes speaks to the administration’s embrace of national decline. But I guess if they’re going to reduce the JAG corps to stop-gap immigration judges — and punish any immigration judges exercise independent judgment — they don’t feel they need smart lawyers. Unfortunately, they’re creating a lost generation of stellar attorneys that will bypass service because the DOD wants to penalize universities for teaching that slavery happened and researching vaccines.
Of note, Hegseth has degrees from Princeton and Harvard, driving home the epic levels of “I got mine, screw the next kid on the ladder” energy radiating off this policy.
“Let’s not forget: officers from these same ‘high risk’ schools formed the backbone of American military leadership in WWII and WWI,” @CounterIntel, an open-source intelligence social media account noted. “Now we’re telling our best and brightest they can’t follow in their footsteps?”
A military source speaking to CNN offered an equally blunt assessment:
The military official said the guidance was akin to prohibiting officers from obtaining a top tier education, and said it amounted to the Pentagon “attempting to purge intellect, diversity of thinking, and critical thought from the military.”
“The overall concern is that we want military officers and non-commissioned officers to have the ability to critically think and challenge ideas … and some of these institutions are great places to do that whether you agree with liberal or conservative thought or not,” said the source familiar with the matter. “It seems both very delicate — oh these words and ideas scare me, so I’ll preclude people from engaging — but also short-sighted and is generating confusion.”
Never forget that the conservative is the most delicate snowflake in the social ecosystem.
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.
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