Stephen Miller Gets Protest Letter From Duke Classmates
Members of White House adviser Stephen Miller’s graduating class at Duke University have a message for the Steve Bannon protege: you don’t represent the values we learned at school.
“We find it impossible to see in your words and actions any glimmer of the university values we so cherish, nor the slightest suggestion that you spent four of your most formative years at the same dynamic, diverse institution of higher education we did,” the petition signed by more than 3,500 people reads.
According to the signers, the diversity on Duke’s campus and extracurricular life should have taught Miller the importance of “intellectual honesty, tolerance, diversity, and respect that we seek to promote in the world.”
Nonetheless, the alums and allies affirmed, “You can rest assured we will continue to champion those very values and serve as representatives of the Duke we want the world to see—for the next ten years and for the decades to follow.”
Miller was a controversial presence on Duke’s campus, writing columns for the college newspaper that attacked feminists, atheists, liberals and beneficiaries of affirmative action in stark terms.
He went on to work for then-Alabama senator and now-Attorney General Jeff Sessions after his stint at university – a gig that eventually landed him in the Trump orbit. Miller has been one of the most ardent backers of the “nationalist-populist” agenda seen as the brainchild of White House chief strategist Steve Bannon. The two collaborated on one of the new administration’s most controversial executive orders – the so-called Muslim ban.
Contact Daniel J. Solomon at [email protected] or on Twitter @DanielJSolomon
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO