Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

7. Intelligence Community · Minor

Require a professionalism course in all National Intelligence University degrees

Partially done

214 7. Intelligence Community

“Military and civilian IC training should include stronger emphasis on the norm of political neutrality, including a mandatory course on professionalism and repercussions for abuse in the execution of duties in all degree programs at the National Intelligence University.”

What has happened

  1. Partially done

    The curriculum limb can now be read, and it is not delivered. `ni-u.edu` 301s to `ndu.edu/NIC/`: on 2026-03-11 the Secretary of War approved the transfer of the National Intelligence University to the Department of War, where it became the National Defense University's sixth college, the National Intelligence College, with its degree programs intact. NDU's own catalog for AY 2026-27, Version I dated 3 September 2026, carries the College's program requirements in full. **Both degrees require the same five core courses** — NIC-6607 Intelligence Reasoning and Analysis, NIC-6608 Leadership and Management in the Intelligence Community, NIC-6609 Intelligence Collection, NIC-6611 Intelligence and National Security Policy, NIC-6701 Research Design — plus one program course (NIC-6601 for the MSSI, NIC-6913 for the MSTI), and none of the six is a course on professionalism, political neutrality, or repercussions for abuse; the catalog's descriptions of all six are about analysis, collection, leadership theory, institutional framework and research method. The College does teach the subject — NIC-6204 Professional Ethics — but it is an elective inside the optional IC Leadership and Management concentration, which is four elective courses a student may choose, not a requirement of any degree. The Quote asks for "a mandatory course on professionalism and repercussions for abuse in the execution of duties in all degree programs". The course exists; the mandate does not. The rung does not move: this limb was already counted as undelivered, and the change is that it is now shown rather than unreadable.

  2. Partially done

    The training half is delivered by statute, by a different instrument and across the whole IC rather than at the National Intelligence University. Section 6306 of the Intelligence Authorization Act for FY2026 rewrites section 6312 of the FY2023 NDAA so that IC analytic-standards training must be "a dedicated, stand-alone training" and must "include instruction on how to report concerns regarding lack of objectivity, bias, politicization, or other issues" under Intelligence Community Directive 203, with each such reported product listed in the annual report to Congress. The Quote's specific object — a mandatory course on professionalism and repercussions for abuse in all NIU degree programs — is not delivered: "National Intelligence University" appears nowhere in P.L. 119-60, and the only NIU item in the Federal Register since 2025-01-20 is a Board of Visitors meeting notice (2025-02-13) and its withdrawal (2025-03-11).

  3. Partially done

    Moved nearby, on the same Act. Congress did touch the National Intelligence University in the window, and what it did was housekeeping in the opposite direction from this ask: section 6801(a)(4) of P.L. 119-60, in the title headed "Modification and Repeal of Reporting Requirements", strikes section 1033 of the National Security Act's NIU subtitle (50 U.S.C. 3227b) and renumbers sections 1034 and 1035. One reporting duty removed; NIU's statutory subtitle otherwise intact, and no curriculum requirement of any kind added. Recorded so that a later pass reading "National Intelligence University appears nowhere in P.L. 119-60" does not repeat the miss — it appears once, in a repeal.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

  • Leveled partial as “the ask achieved by a different instrument that covers only some of it”. The distinction from #572, which stayed not started on the same Act, is that #572 named an instrument that was not enacted at all, whereas the first clause of this Quote — “Military and civilian IC training should include stronger emphasis on the norm of political neutrality” — is exactly what section 6306 now requires.

  • Reviewed 2026-09-06, and the premise has changed. The open question was whether NIU “survived the FY2026 process intact”, and ni-u.edu was off the allowlist. Two findings.

    1. ni-u.edu no longer serves NIU. It redirects to ndu.edu/NIC — the National Intelligence University now operates as the National Intelligence College of the National Defense University, listed there alongside the National War College, the Eisenhower School, the College of Information and Cyberspace, the College of International Security Affairs and the Joint Forces Staff College, and still awarding the Master of Science in Strategic Intelligence, the Master of Science in Science and Technology Intelligence and the Certificate in Intelligence Studies. So NIU was neither terminated nor left standing alone: it was absorbed, with its degree programs intact. A rename is not an elimination — the ask is leveled on functions, not the org chart — so the ask’s addressee still exists and the ask is still live.
    2. That absorption is why the curriculum could not be evidenced at the time: the receiving host is ndu.edu, also a .edu site and then off the allowlist. Neither dia.mil (NIU’s former parent, whose NIU careers page no longer exists) nor odni.gov carries the degree requirements. ODNI’s RSS inventory (536 items back to 2005, read in full on 2026-09-06) contains no item mentioning the National Intelligence University or the National Intelligence College.

  • Superseded the same day, 2026-09-06. ndu.edu is now on the allowlist, and the curriculum limb is no longer a gap in the record — it is answered, in the negative, from the college’s own catalog. See the 2026-09-03 event. Three points about that answer:

    • The catalog is the instrument, and the program pages are not. The college’s academic program pages on ndu.edu give each degree’s concentrations in prose and no course requirements at all; a search that stopped there would have found nothing either way. The requirements are in the NDU catalog PDF linked from ndu.edu, where the National Intelligence College’s own catalog is appended from page 90.
    • The transfer has a date: 2026-03-11, the day the Secretary of War approved it, stated in NDU’s catalog. The earlier note had the fact and not the date.
    • The negative’s reach: it is about the AY 2026-27 catalog’s stated degree requirements, which is the right object — the Quote asks what is mandatory “in all degree programs”. It is not a claim that no professionalism instruction of any kind reaches NIC students by another route.

  • The Federal Register’s only NIU documents in the window remain the Board of Visitors meeting notice (2025-02539, 2025-02-13) and its withdrawal (2025-03857, 2025-03-11) — a governance body whose meeting was called and then canceled, which is the one visible trace of the transition.

  • Context: the Senate intelligence authorization bill reported in 2025 would have terminated the National Intelligence University; the enacted Act does not.

Action
create
Object
Mandatory professionalism course at the National Intelligence University
ID
566