A University of Florida law student won an academic award for a paper arguing how the Constitution only applies to white people.
According to the New York Times, Preston Damsky, a vocal white nationalist, was recently awarded by University of Florida professor and Trump-appointed judge John L. Badalamenti for his paper on “originalism,” a concept upheld by many conservatives that interprets the Constitution as it was originally written.
In the paper, Damsky argued that “We the People,” as originally written on the Constitution’s Preamble, refers to white people. The student defended the idea of stripping voting rights from nonwhite citizens and voiced his support for shoot-to-kill orders for “criminal infiltrators at the border.”
Damsky also called it a “terrible crime” for white people not to make up the majority of America. He stated that white people “cannot be expected to meekly swallow this demographic assault on their sovereignty.”
Badalamenti chose Damsky as the recipient of his book award, which is granted to the best student in the class.
Despite backlash over the award issuance, University of Florida’s Interim Dean Merritt McAlister affirmed the move, citing “free speech rights” and “institutional neutrality.”
Damsky reportedly went on to create an X account to share his views. Months after writing the paper, the UF student tweeted that Jewish people must be “abolished by any means necessary,” which led to him being suspended and barred from campus.
Critics of Damsky receiving the award argued that the move emboldened him to become louder with his racist beliefs.
Law Professor Carliss Chatman called out the hypocrisy in the school’s “free speech” policy.
“I just find it fascinating that this student can write an article, a series of articles that are essentially manifestos, and that’s free speech,” Chatman said, “…but my class can’t be called ‘Race, Entrepreneurship and Inequality.”
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