Stephen Miller Gets Protest Letter From Duke Classmates

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By Daniel J. Solomon March 31, 2017

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 solomon@forward.com or on Twitter @DanielJSolomon

Daniel J. Solomon is the former Assistant to the Editor/News Writer at the Forward. Originally from Queens, he attended Harvard as an undergraduate, where he wrote his senior thesis on French-Jewish intellectual history. He is excited to have returned to New York after his time in Massachusetts. Daniel’s passions include folk music, cycling, and pointed argument.

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