Leaked Army email shows Pentagon labeling 33 universities moderate or high risk

A leaked internal US Army email suggests the Pentagon is quietly building an academic blacklist—without the inconvenience of publishing criteria.

Business Insider reports that the Department of Defense flagged 33 private universities as “moderate” to “high” risk for military education programs, while describing Harvard as “fully off limits.” The email advised service members to have a “backup plan” in case the Pentagon cuts ties with the listed schools. An Army spokesperson told Business Insider that the Defense Department is reviewing additional institutions beyond Harvard, but said no further decisions have been made.

The list spans elite brands and second-tier private schools alike, including MIT, Stanford, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, Duke, Georgetown, Johns Hopkins, NYU, the London School of Economics, and others. The email also said public universities are under review, though it did not list them.

What makes this notable is not that the military is selective about partnerships. It’s that the Pentagon appears to be classifying universities as security risks for education programs that, in many cases, are not about classified research at all. These programs can include law degrees for military attorneys, MBAs, supply chain programs, international relations, and STEM training—credential pipelines funded by the Department of Defense for service members.

In theory, if DoD believes an institution is compromised by foreign influence, hostile intelligence penetration, or noncompliance with export controls, it can formalize restrictions through existing law and regulation. In practice, the leaked email suggests something more bureaucratically convenient: an informal risk rating that can be applied through procurement and tuition-assistance decisions, largely insulated from judicial review and democratic oversight.

Harvard’s special status on the list is also telling. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has publicly attacked Harvard as a “red-hot center of Hate America activism,” Business Insider notes. That is not a security criterion. It’s a political one—an attempt to treat ideological disfavoredness as operational risk.

If the Pentagon can cut off educational pathways for service members based on opaque “risk” labels, it creates a parallel system of control that resembles export controls but is aimed at people and institutions rather than technologies. The result is a soft form of deplatforming: no ban, no law, no courtroom—just “off limits.”

Universities and faculty told Business Insider they were blindsided. That is the point. Blacklists work best when they are informal enough to deny, and consequential enough to obey.

When the state is a major payer, it doesn’t need to censor speech directly. It can simply reroute money, opportunities, and credentials—then call the outcome “risk management.”