A White Nationalist Wrote a Law School Paper Promoting Racist Views. It Won Him an Award.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

This discussion thread was locked as off-topic by Omaha Steve (a host of the Latest Breaking News forum).

Last edited Sat Jun 21, 2025, 09:57 AM - Edit history (1)

Source: New York Times

A White Nationalist Wrote a Law School Paper Promoting Racist Views. It Won Him an Award.

The University of Florida student won an academic honor after he argued in a paper that the Constitution applies only to white people. From there, the situation spiraled.


The granting of an academic award to a white supremacist who wrote a law school paper promoting racist views set off months of turmoil on the University of Florida campus. Jacob Langston for The New York Times

By Richard Fausset
Reporting from Gainesville, Fla.
June 21, 2025, 5:00 a.m. ET

Preston Damsky is a law student at the University of Florida. He is also a white nationalist and antisemite. Last fall, he took a seminar taught by a federal judge on "originalism," the legal theory favored by many conservatives that seeks to interpret the Constitution based on its meaning when it was adopted.

In his capstone paper for the class, Mr. Damsky argued that the framers had intended for the phrase "We the People," in the Constitution's preamble, to refer exclusively to white people. From there, he argued for the removal of voting rights protections for nonwhites, and for the issuance of shoot-to-kill orders against "criminal infiltrators at the border." ... Turning over the country to "a nonwhite majority," Mr. Damsky wrote, would constitute a "terrible crime." White people, he warned, "cannot be expected to meekly swallow this demographic assault on their sovereignty."

At the end of the semester, Mr. Damsky, 29, was given the "book award," which designated him as the best student in the class. According to the syllabus, the capstone counted the most toward final grades.

The Trump-nominated judge who taught the class, John L. Badalamenti, declined to comment for this article, and does not appear to have publicly discussed why he chose Mr. Damsky for the award. ... That left some students and faculty members at the law school, considered Florida's most prestigious, to wonder, and to worry: What merit could the judge have seen in it?

{snip}

Richard Fausset, based in Atlanta, writes about the American South, focusing on politics, culture, race, poverty and criminal justice.

https://www.nytimes.com/by/richard-fausset

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/21/us/white-supremacist-university-of-florida-paper.html

---

I don't know if this constitutes LBN. The incident happened last fall. The reporting on the repercussions seems to be the new part. I'll move this if the forum hosts say so.

Take it away, forum hosts.

-- -- -- -- -- --

Added: If this thread does get disappered, Demovictory9 posted the story over in GD too:

A White Nationalist Wrote a Law School Paper Promoting Racist Views. It Won Him an Award.
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100220418335

-- -- -- -- -- --

Reposted by Mike Masnick
https://bsky.app/profile/mmasnick.bsky.social

>>>>>>
jamelle

‪@jamellebouie.net‬
a sitting federal judge — appointed by trump of course — awarded a student for a paper that basically says dred scott was right and should have gone further

‪Evan Bernick, a finite mode with a smol hooman and a lorg floof‬
‪@evanbernick.bsky.social‬
· 3h
Words fail me.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/21/us/white-supremacist-university-of-florida-paper.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Qk8.Zdse.9h3KhkfNOqv2&smid=url-share

A White Nationalist Wrote a Law School Paper Promoting Racist Views. It Won Him an Award.
www.nytimes.com
June 21, 2025 at 7:00 AM
>>>>>>

a sitting federal judge — appointed by trump of course — awarded a student for a paper that basically says dred scott was right and should have gone further

— jamelle (@jamellebouie.net) 2025-06-21T11:00:01.640Z