Where Did Pete Hegseth Go to College?
Credit: Omar Marques / Getty Images- Pete Hegseth, the 29th secretary of defense, graduated from Princeton University in 2003 with a degree in politics.
- Hegseth participated in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps in college and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army after graduation.
- He also played for the Princeton basketball team and was the editor-in-chief of The Princeton Tory, a conservative publication on campus.
- Hegseth earned a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard in 2011 but vowed to send back his degree, saying the university should be renamed “critical theory university.”
In 2017, Pete Hegseth, then a Fox News correspondent, was interviewed by The Daily Princetonian, the student newspaper for his alma mater, Princeton University. Hegseth shared fond memories of his time at the university, saying that as a conservative in academia, Princeton “did a pretty good job of advancing free exchange of ideas.”
Now, Hegseth, the secretary of defense responsible for the U.S. armed forces, including its military academies, has a notably different perspective on higher education, calling college an “educational cartel” and “socialist camp.”
“I have a new rule. The more elite the university and advanced a graduate is, the dumber they are, the less likely I am to trust them. If you went to the Ivy League, prove to me that you have any common sense at all,” he said on Fox News in 2023.
Hegseth, 44, holds two degrees from Ivy League universities: a bachelor’s degree in politics from Princeton University and a master’s in public policy from Harvard University. However, he has threatened to send back his Harvard diploma, writing “return to sender” on the printed diploma, claiming he could not support the “leftist cause.”
Politics at Princeton
Hegseth was born and raised in Minnesota, graduating from Forest Lake Area High School in 1999 as valedictorian. He participated in speech and choir in high school and was on the football and basketball teams.
He was admitted to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, but chose to attend Princeton University to play on its men’s basketball team.
According to The Daily Princetonian, Hegseth served as a class senator his first year in college and joined the university’s Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) during his sophomore year. He was also a member of the Cap and Gown Club, an eating club at Princeton, and the faith-based group Athletes in Action.
The Daily Princetonian also reported that Hegseth was “unabashedly vocal about his political views” and “arguably one of the most vocal, staunch conservatives on campus.” He was also a “devout Christian” in college, joining a group “lightheartedly referred to as the ‘God Squad.'”
Hegseth climbed to the rank of editor-in-chief and publisher of The Princeton Tory, Princeton’s conservative publication. At the Tory, Hegseth took on topics like diversity in higher education — which he said is “highly overvalued” and a “problem that plagues most of American academia today” — and gay marriage — which Tory editors, including Hegseth, compared to incest and bestiality, calling it “abnormal and immoral.”
In an interview with The Daily Princetonian, Hegseth described the relationship between the Tory and other campus publications as “fun-loving and competitive,” remarking that he once participated in a duel with the “head of the left-wing publication” with paintball guns — and won.
“It wasn’t hostile. There were plenty of contentious discussions,” he said. “But it was more — we are here on campus to debate these ideas and not shut anybody down. … We would jab each other in our publications and monitor each other’s publications and create a debate that way.”
Military, Master’s Degrees, and Media Appearances
In 2003, Hegseth graduated from Princeton with a degree in politics and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army.
He briefly worked for the investment bank Bear Stearns before being deployed to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2004. Hegseth participated in several active-duty deployments throughout his military career, including in Iraq and Afghanistan, and served in the National Guard, according to his official biography.
Hegseth became a director of the conservative advocacy group Vets for Freedom (VFF) around 2006 and rose to lead the organization by 2007. He left VFF in 2012 to run for the U.S. Senate in Minnesota, leaving behind a legacy of mismanagement and “enormous debt,” according to reporting by The New Yorker. His senatorial bid was unsuccessful, and Hegseth volunteered for a tour in Afghanistan.
While at VFF, Hegseth enrolled at Harvard University to pursue his master’s in public policy, graduating in 2011. He has since spoken out about his alma mater and vowed to send back his diploma, saying Harvard should be renamed “critical theory university.”
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“I hope this is a statement that as conservatives and patriots, if we love this country, we can’t keep sending our kids and elevating them to universities that are poisoning their mind,” he said on Fox News in 2022.
He added: “And I may have survived it, and thank goodness, but a lot of kids go there and buy into ‘critical theory university,’ and that’s how we get future leaders … who see America as an evil place. And Harvard is a factory for that kind of thinking.”
In 2014, Hegseth joined Fox News as a contributor and served as CEO of Concerned Veterans for America, a conservative-funded organization that advocates privatizing the Veterans Health Administration, leaving in 2016.
Hegseth was named the official co-host of “Fox & Friends Weekend” in 2017. He continued in that position until his nomination for secretary of defense in 2024.
Taking on DEI at the DoD
On Jan. 24, 2025, JD Vance cast the tie-breaking vote to confirm Pete Hegseth as secretary of defense. Three Republicans and 47 Democratic senators voted against Hegseth’s nomination, leading the vice president to vote on a cabinet nominee for only the second time in U.S. history.
Hegseth’s nomination and tenure as secretary of defense have been mired in controversy. Five days after being confirmed, Hegseth sent a memo stressing that “diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies … are incompatible with the values of the [Department of Defense].”
The memo also directs the Department of Defense (DoD), including military academies, to eliminate DEI offices and curriculum. It also mandates that they teach “that America and its founding documents remain the most powerful force for good in human history.”
The Trump administration’s executive order targeting DEI has resulted in a purge of nearly 400 books from the U.S. Naval Academy library, and West Point has disbanded several student clubs, including the Society of Women Engineers Club, the National Society of Black Engineers Club, and Spectrum, an LGBTQ+ pride group.