In 1986, Miller left Yale to work at the University of California Irvine, where he was later followed by his Yale colleague Derrida. During the same year, he served as president of the Modern Language Association, and was honored by the MLA with a lifetime achievement award in 2005. Both at Yale and UC Irvine, Miller mentored an entire generation of American literary critics including noted queer theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. He was Distinguished Research Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California Irvine until 2001.