This story was originally published in the Duke University student publication The Duke Chronicle. Seyun Park is the winner of the Rolling Stone College Journalism Award in the Feature Writing Category.
“Hi, I’m Stephen Miller. I’m from Santa Monica, California,
and I like guns.”
According to those who met him during freshman orientation, that is how Stephen Miller, Trinity ‘07, made his first introduction at Duke. Miller quickly earned the nickname “Guns,” and his penchant for attracting attention would continue over his Duke career and beyond.
Miller, currently President Donald Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, first made headlines in his rise to power as a speechwriter for the president in 2017. In the following decade, Miller’s power and position have only grown, and he now advises Trump on matters ranging from immigration and homeland security to foreign policy and education.
But before Miller, 40, became one of the nation’s most powerful men, he was an 18-year-old student, living in East Campus’ Pegram dorm, writing columns for The Chronicle and leading conservative activism on campus.
Miller’s four years at Duke became a launching point for his political career.
Twenty years later, those who knew Miller remember him as an eccentric and provocative character on campus — ultimately a reflection of the person he would one day become.
‘Libertarian Lounge Lizard’
Miller liked to carry around a sword. An actual, metal sword.
Alongside his sword, Amy Terwilleger, Trinity ‘07, who lived in Pegram during Miller’s first year, recalled him walking around in a “weird, brown bathrobe” and drinking scotch. As a first-year, Miller “looked and acted like an old man,” she recalled.
A common memory of his dormmates is that Miller, who looked old for his age, would buy alcohol for others at their behest. Miller “launched into angry rants” if cashiers tried to card him, according to journalist Jean Guerrero, author of Hatemonger, a 2020 biography about Miller.
Reporting by Vanity Fair’s Evgenia Peretz confirmed his first-year habits. Peretz added that Miller liked to smoke Nat Sherman cigarettes — something he would later defend in a Chronicle column — leading Peretz to characterize his “slinking around” as that of a “Libertarian Lounge Lizard.”
“In some ways, he was just a normal 18-year-old kid,” Terwilleger said. “He just did these things and said these things that were just so odd, so off the wall that you didn’t take it seriously … like typical kids trying to get attention — they say kind of outrageous things.”
One of Miller’s first-year professors, Hein Goemans, recalled on a podcast earlier this year that Miller told him he wanted to work in the White House one day. Goemans claimed he followed up, asking Miller in his POLSCI 122 class who he would work for, to which Miller replied: “Donald Trump, maybe.” The Chronicle could not independently verify Goemans’ claims, and Goemans declined The Chronicle’s request for comment.
But the most common recollection of Miller’s first-year was his romantic life. Guerrero published Miller’s romantic interest under the pseudonym “Yovana.” Guerrero said Yovana was “romantically involved with [Miller]” while Terwilleger more bluntly said, “he was hooking up with her for a while, and it was really odd.”
Yovana, who hailed from the southern border town of Eagle Pass, Texas, supposedly held more conservative views, which brought her closer to Miller. Guerrero reported that at the time, Miller was more interested in Yovana than she was in him, and that “she didn’t want people to know she was intimate with Miller.”
“Some people have theorized that she broke his heart, and that’s why he’s like this,” said Rebecca, a Pegram resident alongside Miller who requested her last name not be published out of privacy concerns. “But I don’t think that it’s that simple.”
‘A guy that people kind of hate-read’
Beyond Yovana, who moved away after their first year, most who knew Miller struggle to point to specific people as his friends or close confidants.
“You didn’t see him around [at parties],” said Oliver Sherouse, Trinity ‘09 and a fellow conservative columnist for The Chronicle. “He seemed like he was focused a little bit on building his brand, building his organizations, more than he was [on the] recreational parts of being a student.”
Still, students certainly knew who he was. Miller made a name for himself on campus through his Chronicle column “Miller Time” and by seemingly trying to anger as many people as possible. His peers admitted that, at times, he certainly succeeded. By the time he was a junior, the brand of Stephen Miller was thriving.
“He was a guy that people kind of hate-read,” Sherouse said of Miller’s columns. “They read him, but they read him because they enjoyed being angry about it.”
In October 2005, Miller wrote his second column for The Chronicle titled “Tricky Extrapolations,” where he defended radio show host Bill Bennett, who had said one way to reduce crime was to “abort Black babies.” The response was immediate. Over a dozen people submitted letters to the editor in the next few days condemning Miller’s remarks. And that was exactly the kind of response he hoped to get.
“He was just trying to get a rise out of people … just to push people’s buttons,” Terwilleger said.
One of Miller’s editors at The Chronicle, Vol. 101 Editor-in-Chief Seyward Darby, Trinity ‘07, echoed how Miller’s divisiveness led to him never really making friends.
“He cultivated this personality where he didn’t want to be close with anybody,” she said. “He wanted to have really extreme positions and upset people, provoke people and just really set himself apart.”
Darby recalled wanting to have “diversity of viewpoints” at the time Miller was selected to be a columnist, including “at least one more conservative voice amongst the columnists.” But in retrospect, she said, The Chronicle probably should not have published his column.
‘Perversion of justice’
Miller’s most famous Chronicle columns came starting in March 2006, when he sided with the Duke men’s lacrosse players accused of rape. Through multiple columns and appearances on national television programs like O’Reilly Factor and The Nancy Grace Show, Miller argued that the players deserved a “presumption of innocence.” He also believed that District Attorney Mike Nifong was carrying out a “perversion of justice,” among other opinions.
Miller got his fair share of flak in the form of letters to the editor in The Chronicle throughout the scandal, including from Jamaur Bronner, Trinity ‘10,Alex Cho, Fuqua ‘07, and Samiron Ray, Trinity ‘10.
“He enjoyed those letters where people were like, ‘This is so offensive. I can’t believe you’d say this,’” Darby said.
But ultimately, in this case, Miller emerged as the supposed champion of justice: The charges against the three accused Duke lacrosse players were dropped in April 2007. In a 2017 interview with The Atlantic, Miller stated that his advocacy for the players was the thing he was “most proud of from his college years.”
Although Miller’s dialogue amid the lacrosse case did not transform him into a campus celebrity, he did gain recognition for leading the charge for the lacrosse players.
“He never became a hero. He was not popular,” Sherouse said. “But there was a sense of kind of grudging respect among people who didn’t agree with him … at a certain point you had to answer to the guy.”
Darby views it as a critical turning point for Miller.
“I don’t think he’s ethically right. But I think that, certainly on the facts of the case, he ended up having argued for the correct side of things,” she said. “And that put him in even better stead with the cohort of pundits that he was being celebrated by.”
‘Unnecessarily over the top’ rhetoric
Although rare, Miller was at times outflanked by conservatives further right-leaning than him. In 2016, Miller rejected ties to white supremacist Richard Spencer, who claimed he had mentored Miller at Duke.
Another activist whom Miller rejected was Strouse Campbell, Trinity ‘07. Campbell was and is a proponent of the controlled demolition conspiracy of the 9/11 attacks. Campbell claimed that he was supposed to debate Miller on the issue in 2007, but Miller pulled out two days before the debate.
“My understanding is that [he] just didn’t want to go on record into the physics of the building collapses, and they were kind of depending on some kind of an emotional type appeal,” Campbell said.
Miller was unequivocal in his condemnation of Campbell in 2007.
“I think that these students disgraced our university,” Miller told The Chronicle at the time. “The only way you could support such a claim is if you have a deep-seated hatred of America.”
But Miller, who was the executive director of the Duke Conservative Union in his senior year, did not always get along with more moderate fellow conservatives either.
“Even people who might be inclined to agree with him found his rhetoric off-putting, and unnecessarily over the top, provocative, and ultimately, for them, it was counterproductive,” said Joe Fore, Trinity ‘07 and then-vice president of academic affairs for Duke Student Government.
Sherouse said that Miller lost him and many other conservatives in another one of his fights: academic freedom. During his sophomore year, Miller founded a chapter of David Horowitz’s group Students for Academic Freedom, later inviting Horowitz to speak in March 2006.
Fore worked with many student groups through DSG but said he does not know if anyone else was actually part of Miller’s club, suspecting it may have only existed on paper. Either way, Miller circulated an “academic freedom pledge” to Duke professors that he claimed would “affirm [the professors’] commitment to students’ intellectual rights and guarantee that their classrooms will not be used as a place for promoting a partisan agenda.” Once again, letters to the editor ensued.
“This narrative that, ‘Oh, [professors are] out to get you, and they’re dangerous, they’re hurting America.’ It struck me as silly,” Sherouse admitted. “Somewhere along the way, we’ve lost the plot.”
‘He likes the attention’
As one of the country’s most partisan figures, opinions of Miller today differ widely.
Darby called Miller “the worst person [she] ever met.” On the other hand, Adam Zell, Trinity ‘08, said Miller is the “greatest man to come out of Duke since President Nixon.” Zell worked with Miller on the 2006 memorial commission at Duke for the fifth anniversary of 9/11. Guerrero reported that Miller became “so consumed” with the project that he failed to take his LSAT for law school.
But beyond their current-day opinions, most alumni’s memories of Miller, if they had any, are fading. Nobody seems to remember if Miller had a roommate, and if so, who he was. David Bitner, former president of the Duke Conservative Union, wrote in an email to The Chronicle, “Whatever insights there were to be had from my 20-year-old memories have long since been extracted.”
Many professors who knew or taught Miller at the time chose not to comment due to FERPA guidelines on talking about former students. And other students with documented ties to Miller through the Duke Conservative Union have declined to comment.
Some who remember Miller are choosing not to remember him closely.
“They were sick of him in college, and they’re definitely sick of him now,” Darby said, who added she now declines most interview requests to talk about Miller. “There’s still a sort of persistent feeling that he likes the attention, so I think people are like, ‘Don’t give him oxygen.’”
In 2017, a group of Duke alumni drafted an open letter to Miller, condemning his actions, and organized a fundraising campaign to support the Council on America-Islamic relations, following Miller’s role in Trump’s 2017 “travel ban” to Muslim countries. But efforts like those have since quieted down.
Miller is one of the youngest senior leaders in the Trump administration, so his career in politics is likely far from over. At least for now, he will continue to serve as one of the president’s most loyal advisers.
Miller was recently spotted at Duke’s Sweet 16 game against St. John’s in Washington. His post-graduation relationship with his alma mater has remained murky, as the Trump administration has repeatedly challengeduniversities like Duke, but old habits die hard: Perhaps his attendance shows Miller still has a soft spot for Duke basketball.
In 20 years, other things about Miller have not changed either.
“He still has that same ‘I am never going to back down from any fight at any point. I will never concede anything ever,’” Sherouse said. “That’s what you see now in his role in this administration and … it’s why [Trump and Miller] get along so well.”
Miller did not respond to a request for comment on the assertions made by his peers.
Click here to read the full article.
