diff --git a/pom.xml b/pom.xml
index cdc2969edd..9e6fe09d95 100644
--- a/pom.xml
+++ b/pom.xml
@@ -958,7 +958,7 @@
             <reportsDirectory>${project.build.directory}/surefire-reports</reportsDirectory>
             <junitxml>.</junitxml>
             <filereports>SparkTestSuite.txt</filereports>
-            <argLine>-Xmx3g -XX:MaxPermSize=${MaxPermGen} -XX:ReservedCodeCacheSize=512m</argLine>
+            <argLine>-ea -Xmx3g -XX:MaxPermSize=${MaxPermGen} -XX:ReservedCodeCacheSize=512m</argLine>
             <stderr/>
             <systemProperties>
               <java.awt.headless>true</java.awt.headless>
diff --git a/project/SparkBuild.scala b/project/SparkBuild.scala
index 39ac27f820..ff8cf81b28 100644
--- a/project/SparkBuild.scala
+++ b/project/SparkBuild.scala
@@ -256,6 +256,8 @@ object Hive {
 
   lazy val settings = Seq(
     javaOptions += "-XX:MaxPermSize=1g",
+    // Specially disable assertions since some Hive tests fail them
+    javaOptions in Test := (javaOptions in Test).value.filterNot(_ == "-ea"),
     // Multiple queries rely on the TestHive singleton. See comments there for more details.
     parallelExecution in Test := false,
     // Supporting all SerDes requires us to depend on deprecated APIs, so we turn off the warnings
@@ -385,6 +387,7 @@ object TestSettings {
     javaOptions in Test += "-Dsun.io.serialization.extendedDebugInfo=true",
     javaOptions in Test ++= System.getProperties.filter(_._1 startsWith "spark")
       .map { case (k,v) => s"-D$k=$v" }.toSeq,
+    javaOptions in Test += "-ea",
     javaOptions in Test ++= "-Xmx3g -XX:PermSize=128M -XX:MaxNewSize=256m -XX:MaxPermSize=1g"
       .split(" ").toSeq,
     // This places test scope jars on the classpath of executors during tests.
diff --git a/sql/hive/pom.xml b/sql/hive/pom.xml
index f6805b9421..95db71c2fd 100644
--- a/sql/hive/pom.xml
+++ b/sql/hive/pom.xml
@@ -161,6 +161,10 @@
       <plugin>
         <groupId>org.scalatest</groupId>
         <artifactId>scalatest-maven-plugin</artifactId>
+        <configuration>
+          <!-- Specially disable assertions since some Hive tests fail them -->
+          <argLine>-da -Xmx3g -XX:MaxPermSize=${MaxPermGen} -XX:ReservedCodeCacheSize=512m</argLine>
+        </configuration>
       </plugin>
       <plugin>
          <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>