Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the US military academies to stop appointing civilian professors to tenured positions, arguing that the schools need to concentrate more heavily on preparing future officers for combat. The directive, signed on Tuesday, 29 September, applies to the US Military Academy at West Point, the US Naval Academy and the US Air Force Academy.
The change does not appear to strip existing civilian professors of tenure. Instead, it stops the academies from appointing civilian faculty to tenured positions and instructs the military departments to develop new hiring arrangements that give greater weight to flexibility and contributions to military education.
