As you know Trump has created a ‘War On Higher Education” with the main front being widely acknowledged elite schools. Not just Ivy League schools I should add. Some have given in to his bullying, but some have shown a spine and stood up to him. However some have pushed back hard, while others took a more measured stance. Duke University is in that second group and one alumnus has written about another, specifically the vile, despicable Stephen Miller (class of 2007) being the real driving force behind Duke losing another $108 million in federal funding.
Duke spent $1.5 Billion on research last year with 60% of it coming from the government. It’s already lost 600 jobs mostly through buyouts) due to being part of wider freezing of federal funds to universities. According to an opinion piece in The Hill, its author and Duke alum Mark L. Pinsky says an additional 3000 jobs are at risk. Now, in a letter from Secretary of Education and (since this involves Duke’s medical school) HHS Secretary RFK Jr. more money is now frozen:
Then came the July 28 letter, jointly signed by Education Secretary Linda McMahon and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., which strongly suggested that Duke’s medical center may be guilty of “vile racism” that “hides behind a smug superiority.” Specifically — and without offering evidence — the letter states, “These practices allegedly include illegal and wrongful racial preferences and discriminatory activity in recruitment, student admissions, scholarships and financial aid, mentoring and enrichment programs, hiring, promotion, and more.”
Pinsky also reports that the Dept. of Education is separately investigating Duke’s Law School and Law School Journal. Specifically McMahon’s Dept. alleges they “gave advantages to prospective editors from underrepresented groups.” Oh the horror! What an appalling sin, giving non-white students a fair look to make sure they aren’t being excluded? For giving them a fair shot using the same standards as white folks instead of having to navigate hurdles thrown in their path?
Anyway it looks like Trump and therefore his entire administration has it in for Duke, just as they do for Ivy League schools. As arguably its most powerful graduate you’d think Miller would, since Duke was part of a couple hundred institutions that offered pretty mild pushback to anti-DEI/Woke demands have been spared this kind of thing. However, many Duke alumni think Miller has held a grudge and is now extracting payback. That HE is the driving force behind the targeting of Duke:
Some on campus see in all this the malign hand of perhaps the most powerful Duke alum in the country, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, class of 2007. Miller, a conservative student firebrand on campus, may be out to settle some scores.
Miller had a weekly column called “Miller Time” in the Duke Chronicle, the daily student paper. His first missive, from September 2005, was titled “Welcome to Leftist University.” He castigated Duke for hosting writer Maya Angelou, accusing her of “racial paranoia.”
In February 2006, Miller wrote, “A large number of Duke professors have disregarded the basic tenets of academic freedom and abandoned their professional obligations. They indoctrinate students in their personal ideologies and prejudices and in so doing betray the very people who are supposed to be their paramount concern.”
Miller was known to be an uncaring, entitled behaving P.O.S. in high school. He made a point of bitching about being expected not to throw trash on the floor saying that’s what janitors are there for. I for one can imagine him not wanting to bother going to the head, and just pissing on the floor and yelling to a janitor to come clean it up. Miller it should be noted came from a well-off family that fell on some difficult times which is how he wound up at Santa Monica High School. Instead of being surrounded by well-to-do mostly white folks he was in a diverse environment and when he talked sh*t at those he considered inferior they gave it right back to him. He’s called that time the worst period of his life.
Still, he was smart enough to be able to get into an elite private university. I gather his dad’s real estate fortunes had rebounded. Alas, at Duke he didn’t grow out of his P.O.S. personality. On the contrary. His conservative activism at Duke got him on RWNJ radio shows and even as you can see in the title pic TV. Yep. Fox! I’d like to make a nasty crack about him being angry about not getting laid enough in college but whatever is wrong in his rotten soul goes much deeper.
My sister is a retired R.N. who went through a lot in life before getting her act together and becoming an R.N. She worked in the NICU at a very good hospital (in southern Illinois the only better and more advanced ones were in the Metro East suburbs across the river from St. Louis) and was I’m told highly regarded. Like many who do that work she got burned out. But she dealt with a lot of babies, and like many in her job would spend time with kids in the nursery who weren’t fighting for their lives just to remember things can be good. A long time ago I insisted people had to learn to be evil. No one was literally born that way. She told me I was wrong, and that sometimes she and other nurses could hold a baby and just sense something was wrong with them despite them seeming normal.
I look at the likes of Stephen Miller (and others) and have come to reluctantly agree she’s right. I still believe almost everyone who turns out bad and evil wasn’t born that way. That along the way they learned the wrong things. But I look with different eyes now and do think that those who are “wired differently” didn’t get their proverbial wiring changed along the way. No, some were wired wrong from the moment they took their first breath. Stephen Miller is such a person.
With Trump there’s ample evidence of how he was turned into what he is. With Miller, a look at the rest of his family who are ashamed to be related to him provides no explanation of what was different about him all along. Even before high school. Like Trump he never forgives a slight and hold grudges. More importantly he LIVES for the chance to get payback. Unfortunately for Duke University he happened to attend college there.
Since he wasn’t universally acclaimed by all there to be the greatest addition to the Duke family of all time he’s butt-hurt. Worse, unlike Santa Monica H.S. he was surrounded by people as smart as or smarter than him. When THEY called him out on on his bullshit they could take him apart piece by piece and it stung. Now he’s in a position to get revenge and he will take great delight in taking a wrecking ball to his alma mater and the livelihoods of so many who work there.
It remains to be seen how much more damage he’ll do to Duke. There are after all only so many hours in the day. He’s got lots of scores to settle. Still, and this is a picayune thing to mention but there’s a certain irony to Miller accusing Duke of racism. No, I’m not talking about his Jewish ancestry and the fact so many Holocaust victims spin in their graves due to his actions. I’m talking about Duke being so resented by so many who’ve followed college basketball. A decades long whisper campaign that sometimes had prominent sportscasters/personalities say it out loud that Duke’s basketball team was too white!
I’m serious. Legions of fans, many of them white rooted against Duke which was a perineal national title contender during Miller’s time there for their sports teams being too white! I for one find the current situation of Miller being the man pulling the strings now accusing Duke of not being favorable enough to white people more than a little ironic.
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“Legions of fans, many of them white rooted against Duke which was a perineal national title contender during Miller’s time there for their sports teams being too white!”
I think you meant “perennial” which means “enduring” or “continually recurring” (like with flowers and plants). The word you used means “related to the area between the genitals and the anus” (which is more apt to describe Stephen Miller’s face, only far more punchable).