This is a bit of an odd request, but I'm researching Bill Barr and remember reading a newspaper clipping someone had photographed and uploaded, but I've been having trouble locating it. Obviously, a Google search of "Bill Barr" "confirmation hearing" "opinion" is like looking for a needle in a haystack.
I remember it was relatively short. It was an opinion column from a former classmate of Bill Barr's and discussed his time in school. It was referencing his first confirmation hearings as Attorney General in Bush I's administration, and discussed briefly Joe Biden's role in the confirmation process.
I'd be really grateful for any American political historians' help in finding this source which I think dates to 1989.
I don't think it'd be from 1989. The April 5, 1989 hearing was a relatively brief one for assistant attorney general, with the confirmation hearing for his first AG term 18 months later in 1991. I'm pretty sure this isn't your request but is a a relatively decent piece including background on the 1991 hearing. A quick search doesn't show much on the 1989 hearing but there's a decent amount of stuff on the 1991 one, including the full show on C-Span. So my guess is that it would either be associated with the 1991 hearing or the 2019 one, with the latter a relatively easy find, although has only one reference to a classmate and it's not for Barr.
Depending on how much work you want to put in, the usual way to really do a deep dive is to go through committee reports and the Congressional Record, since if something is worthwhile (and an opinion piece by a former GW law classmate would usually qualify) some Senator will have almost certainly asked for unanimous consent to put it in along with 30 pages of other random stuff, which will point you to the actual article itself even if the CR only contains an excerpt. This saves immense amounts of time going through various media archives. C-Span can be useful that way too since it'll have the various witnesses and Senators timestamped.
Also, one Google search tip - for people who've served in government over the course of many years, if your search excludes modern day pieces with a (-2020 -2019 -2018) tag, you'll usually get a much more relevant set of results.
Hope that helps!