What Was Defense Secretary Nominee Pete Hegseth ’03 Like at Princeton?

At high noon one day in December 2002, Pete Hegseth ’03 picked up a paintball pistol, aimed it at Owen Conroy ’05, and fired.

The shootout was scheduled by the Princeton Dueling Society, a short-lived club that sought a “civilized” way to settle disputes. PAW reported at the time that duelers were required to dress up and their dispute had to meet set parameters — think matters involving personal honor or public slander. In this case, Hegseth was a Republican and Conroy was president of the Princeton College Democrats.

The two fired, and Hegseth, an Army ROTC member and “decent shot,” according to PAW, hit Conroy, but the paintball bounced off. They tried again and this time Hegseth “hit the bull’s eye, so to speak, soiling the front of his competitor’s pants.”

The episode perhaps marked the flashiest moment that Hegseth — who Tuesday was picked as President-elect Donald Trump’s defense secretary — contributed to the pages of Princeton history while he was a student, but it wasn’t the only one.

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Pete Hegseth ’03

Nassau Herald

Hegseth played varsity basketball and served as a company commander for the ROTC. On the basketball team he “patiently toiled in obscurity” for four years, according to The Daily Princetonian, which also described Hegseth as “a recruiting afterthought.” When he was called off the bench in March of his senior year and made two 3-pointers that allowed the Tigers to best Columbia, he “beamed as he reflected on taking a leading role.”

Hegseth majored in politics with certificates from the School for Public and International Affairs and in American Studies, and he wrote for The Princeton Tory. A lot.

In his year as Tory publisher, he sought to “‘legitimate conservatism as a philosophy’ and ‘facilitate a campus discussion,’” he wrote at the close of his term. He went on to detail the kind of political philosophy he would later espouse as a Fox News anchor, decrying those who call conservatives intolerant of “gays, feminists, and atheists” and praising conservatives’ “tangible solutions for societal ills.”

“By advocating government support of the traditional family unit, a return of the acceptability of the ‘homemaker’ vocation, freedom from oppressive government oversight, moral responsibility, and the revival of religious faith, conservatives provide a working blueprint for a free and prosperous future,” he wrote.

During his term as Tory publisher, Hegseth was critical of the Organization of Women Leaders (OWL) on campus, even running a cover story featuring an illustration of an owl in a gun’s crosshairs. In his 2020 book, American Crusade: Our Fight to Stay Free, Hegseth detailed his interactions with OWL members, particularly following their endorsement of a male candidate for Undergraduate Student Government president on the basis that he was pro-choice, over the female candidate who was pro-life. PAW could not independently confirm this claim.

“Through that experience,” Hegseth wrote in 2020, “I realized that old-school feminism (you know, actually fighting for women’s equality) was dead and leftism had taken over.”

Support for studying the Western canon surfaced in his missives, as well as LGBTQ issues. In October 2002, under Hegseth’s leadership, the “Tory editors” published a note mocking pride events on campus: “Hey, boys can wear bras and girls can wear ties until we’re blue in the face, but it won’t change the reality that the homosexual lifestyle is abnormal and immoral.”

Hegseth has appeared less friendly toward his alma mater in recent years. On Fox & Friends in 2022, he complained about diversity initiatives on Ivy League campuses, and on camera he wrote “return to sender” on his graduate degree from Harvard.

“You know what I say, Pete? One down, one to go,” said another man on the show. “Andrew, would you go grab that Princeton diploma?”

“Not yet, not yet, not yet,” Hegseth replied, laughing.