https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Miller_(aide)
Miller grew up in a liberal-leaning Jewish family in Santa Monica, California.[2] Though his parents were Democrats, Miller became a conservative after reading Guns, Crime, and Freedom, a book by National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre.[3] While attending Santa Monica High School, Miller began appearing on conservative talk radio.[3] In 2002, at the age of sixteen, Miller wrote a letter to the editor of The Santa Monica Evening Outlook, in which he stated that "Osama Bin Laden would feel very welcome at Santa Monica High School."[4] Miller invited conservative activist David Horowitz to speak, first at the high school and later at Duke University, and afterwards denounced the fact that neither of the centers would authorize the event.[3]
In 2007,[5] Miller received his bachelor's degree from Duke University, majoring in political science.[3] Miller served as president of the Duke chapter of Horowitz's Students for Academic Freedom and wrote conservative columns for the school newspaper. Miller gained national attention for his defense of the students who were wrongly accused of rape in the Duke lacrosse case.[3][6] While attending Duke University, Miller accused the poet Maya Angelou of "racial paranoia" and described student organization Chicano Student Movement of Aztlán (MEChA) as a "radical national Hispanic group that believes in racial superiority."[7]
While at Duke, Miller and the Duke Conservative Union helped co-member Richard B. Spencer, a Duke graduate student at the time, with fundraising and promotion for an immigration policy debate in March 2007 between the open-borders activist and University of Oregon professor Peter Laufer and journalist Peter Brimelow, the founder of the anti-immigration website VDARE. Spencer would later become an important figure in the alt-right movement and president of the anti-Semitic and white supremacist National Policy Institute. Reports in the media said Spencer had mentored Miller while at Duke. Miller says he has "absolutely no relationship with Mr. Spencer" and that he "completely repudiate his views, and his claims are 100 percent false." A contemporary of Spencer and Miller at Duke disputed the mentorship claim. Spencer later said the relationship had been exaggerated.[8][9]
Duke University's former senior vice president John Burness told The News & Observer in February 2017 that, while at Duke, Miller "seemed to assume that if you were in disagreement with him, there was something malevolent or stupid about your thinking — incredibly intolerant." History professor KC Johnson, however, criticized Duke for "not [having] an atmosphere conducive to speaking up," and praised Miller's role at Duke: "I think it did take a lot of courage, and he has to get credit for that." [10]
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