Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Stephen Miller Ate Glue In 3rd Grade. His Teacher Was Suspended For Saying So.

A California teacher was suspended after revealing that Stephen Miller ate glue in her third grade class, the Los Angeles Times reported Thursday.

Nikki Fiske, a teacher in the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District, has been placed on “home assignment” as the district decides what to do following her first-person account of 8-year-old Miller published in the Hollywood Reporter on Wednesday.

Miller, a senior adviser to President Trump best known for his hardline stance on immigration, was Fiske’s student at Franklin Elementary School in 1993, according to her account in the Reporter. She compared him to the Peanuts character Pig Pen, who was constantly surrounded by a cloud of dust and crumbs.

“I was always trying to get him to clean up his desk — he always had stuff mashed up in there,” she said.

She specifically mentioned the Jewish aide’s fascination with glue, something that also was noted in an essay for Politico, written by a former classmate.

“He would pour the glue on his arm, let it dry, peel it off and then eat it,” she said. “He was a strange dude.”

The school district is concerned about Fiske’s release of student information, said district spokeswoman Gail Pinsker. She may have gone against laws and district policies.

Fiske is a 72-year-old registered Democrat, according to the Times, who noted that her Facebook page shows she supports liberal and progressive causes, such as gun control.

Miller was a vocal supporter of the zero-tolerance border policies enacted over the summer, and he’s also credited with crafting last year’s controversial travel ban. Recently, suggesting cutting the United States’s refugee program even lower to about 25,000 people, while the initial agreed-upon ceiling reached 45,000.

Alyssa Fisher is a news writer at the Forward. Email her at [email protected], or follow her on Twitter at @alyssalfisher

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.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.