The Pentagon will no longer appoint civilians to tenured faculty positions at the nation's military service academies, under a memorandum signed Tuesday by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
The memo directs the secretaries of the military departments to immediately end the practice of granting tenure to civilian faculty and to develop hiring plans that prioritize institutional flexibility and contributions to the warfighting mission.
"The primary purpose of our Military Service Academies is to prepare the next generation of officers to lead the men and women of the greatest military on Earth," Hegseth wrote. The memo argues that "to ensure our educational institutions remain firmly focused on this warfighting mission, we must address the structural mechanisms that have allowed civilian academic norms to dilute our focus on lethality."
Hegseth said tenure can contribute to "academic stagnation" and "faculty complacency," making institutions less able to adapt to emerging needs and allowing curricula to drift toward the research priorities of tenured faculty rather than the mission of educating future warfighters.
The directive does not strip tenure from faculty members who already hold it. The U.S. Military Academy at West Point, the U.S. Naval Academy and the U.S. Air Force Academy did not immediately respond to questions, and Pentagon officials offered no further details.
The share of civilian faculty varies by academy. It is highest at the Naval Academy, where roughly half of the 600 faculty members are civilians. The academies hire civilians for expertise in disciplines military officers don't typically study, such as English and the humanities. Academy leaders have previously cited tenure as a recruiting and retention tool — during a March 2025 Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, West Point's superintendent called it a way for civilian faculty to advance within their disciplines.