US EditionUniversity of Florida Suspends Law Student After White Supremacist Paper Wins Book Award
- University of Florida suspended 29-year-old law student Preston Damsky on April 3 after he posted antisemitic remarks and was barred from campus for three years.
- Damsky won a book award last fall for a paper arguing that the Constitution’s phrase 'We the People' applies only to white people and non-whites should lose voting rights.
- The paper, taught by Trump-appointed Judge John L. Badalamenti, also called for orders to kill criminal infiltrators and claimed political leaders were controlled by Jews.
- University of Florida Hillel condemned Damsky’s rhetoric and urged policy review after the award, while law community members called for clearer limits between offensive speech and violence.
- The controversy triggered a town hall in April where Dean McAlister stressed protecting the law school’s reputation and noted ongoing administrative efforts to address the situation.
20 Articles
20 Articles
Florida Law Student Claimed ‘We the People’ Only Applied to Whites and Got Top Marks from Trump-Appointed Judge — Now He’s Suspended and Internship Offer Gone: 'Significant Mistrust'
University of Florida law student Preston Damsky holds an ideology most would dismiss as beyond the fringe. In a term paper for a fall semester class on “originalism” — the legal theory interpreting the Constitution’s original meaning favored by most conservative jurists — the 29-year-old California native and self-proclaimed white nationalist didn’t hold back on his racist, transgressive beliefs. The phrase, “We the People,” refers only to whit…
Florida campus roiled after antisemitic student wins award for paper defending white supremacy
Preston Damsky received the “book award” for a paper he wrote for a class last fall in which he argued for the removal of voting rights protections for non-white citizens.
John Badalamenti's Treatment of a White Nationalist Law Student Holds Up a Mirror to the Conservative Legal Movement
John Badalamenti, a federal judge appointed by President Donald Trump in 2020, co-taught a seminar on originalism at University of Florida Law last fall. At the end of the term, he bestowed the best-in-class award to Preston Terry Damsky, a law student who in his capstone paper argued that the Constitution only applies to white people. Proponents of originalism, including the Republican justices on the Supreme Court, contend that the Constitutio…
The Forward
Florida campus roiled after antisemitic student wins law school award for paper defending white supremacy
(JTA) — A University of Florida law student who posted that Jews must be “abolished by any means necessary” won an award for a paper in which he argued that the Constitution applies solely to white people. The honor for an avowed white supremacist and antisemite has roiled the campus at the public university, in a state where a 2023 law prevents state funding for university programs that advocate for “diversity, equity and inclusion or promote o…
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