How Far Pete Hegseth Really Got In School

Pete Hegseth is now Donald Trump's righthand man at the Pentagon, and arguably the most paranoid person in Trump's administration, but before he was making headlines every other day as secretary of war, he was hitting the books, and hitting them hard. The Fox News personality turned defense chief collected not one, but two Ivy League degrees: first a Bachelor of Arts in politics from Princeton University in 2003, followed by a Master of Public Policy from Harvard University a decade later.

The future defense secretary's story starts about as American as it gets: a small-town Minnesota valedictorian makes good and climbs the Ivy League ladder. Hegseth graduated at the top of his class from Forest Lake Area High School in 1999, then traded the land of 10,000 lakes for the gothic-spired halls of Princeton. There, he spent four years studying politics, playing basketball, and flexing his conservative credentials as a writer for The Princeton Tory, the school's right-wing publication which, according to a report by Reuters, garnered him a bit of a reputation as one of Princeton's most provocative agitators — a rather tacky move he's never quite shaken. By 2003, he had his bachelor's degree in hand and was ready to take on the larger world of politics.

A few years into his post-Princeton life, Hegseth decided one Ivy League degree wasn't enough. Per The Boston Globe, he enrolled at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government in 2009, though apparently grad school didn't immediately grab him, because he studied for just one semester before calling it quits. Hegseth didn't abandon ship entirely and came back a few years later to finish his degree, earning a Master of Public Policy in 2013 after completing a 47-page policy brief that, well, we'll get to in a minute.

Here's what makes Pete Hegseth's educational background so intriguing. Sure, the man was picking fights with the left as early as his Princeton years, and there's no denying that he's almost always been consistent with his conservative rhetoric, but that 2013 policy brief? It reads like a different politician. As The Harvard Crimson notes, Hegseth advocated for a Minnesota STEM high school that didn't just dabble in diversity; it went all in. He called for "geographic quotas" to make sure students from every Congressional district got a shot at attending, and even made the case that giving disadvantaged and minority students equal opportunities should be a priority. You know, the kind of stuff that would make today's Pete Hegseth, known for his undying fealty to Trump's cause, break out in hives.

So, what does all that Ivy League polish amount to in 2025? Hegseth now holds one of the most powerful positions in government, and he's picked up a few unflattering nicknames along the way. Whether his Harvard policy work represents genuine intellectual evolution or just a man who knows his audience is anyone's guess. What's clear is that Hegseth rode elite credentials straight to the Pentagon, even as he serves an administration openly hostile to those institutions. The academic work opened doors; what he's done inside those doors is another matter entirely.