National Securities Affairs Fellows - Warriors or Social Engineers - 20 April 2026

Recently, the Pentagon announced that it is cutting ties with Harvard (see following link):

Pentagon says it's cutting ties with 'woke' Harvard | AP News

All ties mean no more military training, fellowships, programs. It would appear that the Ivy Leage pipeline to power is DEAD.

Hoover Institution, to which I am a donor, has a program wherein it brings on National Securities Affairs Fellows for short term fellowships. Perhaps Hoover should attempt to rescue the Harvard cast offs and incorporate them into its own program of National Securities Affairs Fellows.

As a Hoover donor, though I applaud the Hoover program, I haven't always been happy with the reports of the National Securities Affairs Fellows at Hoover. I am reminded of an experience ten years ago where I attended a presentation given by four National Security Affairs Fellows, all in their mid '30's, at a Hoover donor retreat at Stanford University. The four National Security Affairs Fellows were all, fast-track colonels, assigned to the Pentagon, each representing one of the four branches of the US military. The fellows' presentation discussed an evaluation framework for promotion in the military.

That day, ten years ago, my principal takeaway from the National Security Affairs Fellows' presentation was that the officer promotional evaluation criteria they put forward included nothing about an officer candidate's intestinal fortitude (guts), bravery, or risk-taking propensity.

In the post presentation Q and A I averred, to the effect, "I don't think Patton, Sherman, Oliver P. Smith, or even George Armstrong Custer would have made the grade under the criteria you describe." The one female colonel (amongst the four) ... I think she was US Army, took the reply: In her answer she "tap danced" around my question, saying, to the effect, "today's military is not yesterday's military. We have different goals today." Deflecting from the point of my question, the young, obviously intelligent officer, said nothing, pro or con, about whether or not a warrior mentality was germane to a military person's make up.

To me the Army colonel's reply reinforced my then growing sense that the military had strayed from a culture where the warrior ethos was a central theme, to an organization where politically correct nostrums were the main focus of interest: DEI; taxpayer funded gender transition surgery; prideful PR trumpeting of new anatomically correctly designed uniforms for pregnant women, etc.

My suspicions that a warrior ethos as being essential to the military culture had been replaced by a focus on social justice were broadly shared. I remember an internet meme several years ago juxtaposing a US army promotional video championing the availability of pregnant woman uniforms with a Russian army video putting forward a macho warrior theme. The meme creator, of course, wanted to ridicule the US military as having strayed from its central purpose.

Trump/Hegseth's relentless focus on restoring the warrior ethic in the US military, for one, as measured by repairing the Autopen era military recruiting deficit, appears to vindicate some of the worrying perceptions I, and many others, had held about the military's straying from the warrior ethos to a climate being driven by other factors, including social justice.

At the next presentation by the Hoover National Securities Affairs Fellows, I'd like to hear some reassurance that the warrior qualities held by some of our most important military leaders over history remain an essential component part of the promotional criteria for military personnel. And I hope some of those fellows include the Harvard cast-offs. Kudos to Hoover if they can get them.