Update: University Of Florida Law Dean Responds To New York Times Article
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.
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 [National Constitutionalism: An Originalist and Structuralist Analysis of Border Policy, Immigration and Naturalization Law, and the Fourteenth Amendment], 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?
The granting of the award set off months of turmoil on the law school campus. Its interim dean, Merritt McAlister, defended the decision earlier this year, citing Mr. Damsky’s free speech rights and arguing that professors must not engage in “viewpoint discrimination.”
Ms. McAlister, in an email to the law school community, also invoked “institutional neutrality,” an increasingly popular policy among college administrators. It instructs schools not to take public positions on hot-button issues.
But the question of how officials should respond to Mr. Damsky — who, in an interview, said that referring to him as a Nazi “would not be manifestly wrong” — is not merely academic. …
At the University of Florida, the story of the book award took a dramatic turn soon after Ms. McAlister defended the decision to honor Mr. Damsky with it. It was then, in February, that Mr. Damsky opened an account on X and began posting racist and antisemitic messages. After he wrote in late March that Jews must be “abolished by any means necessary,” the university suspended him, barred him from campus and stepped up police patrols around the law school. He is now challenging the punishment, which could result in his expulsion.
Mr. Damsky’s hateful posts drew shock and fear in some corners of the university. According to Hillel International, the university has the largest number of Jewish undergraduate students in the country. …
A spokesman for the university declined to answer questions related to this article or to make any administrators available for interviews. But in emails to Mr. Damsky obtained by The New York Times, university officials wrote that his posts had made numerous students fear for their safety. The officials also cited another student’s claim that Mr. Damsky had described his paper as concluding “on a call for extralegal violence,” which Mr. Damsky denies.
In an interview, Mr. Damsky said that he belonged to no organization or group, and that he did not pose a physical threat to anyone. He said he was being unfairly targeted for sharing his ideas, and blithely shrugged off the criticism. The disciplinary measures he faces could result in expulsion. He said he planned to fight them vigorously.
“You know,” he said, “I’m not, like, a psychopathic ax murderer.” …
While Mr. Damsky’s papers were written in a formal style consistent with legal scholarship, his social media posts have been blunt, crass and ugly. A critic of Israel’s war in Gaza, he argued in one post that President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio were “controlled by Jews,” whom he called “the common enemy of humanity.” …
Judge Badalamenti, who sits on the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, was one of two instructors of the class in which Mr. Damsky won the award. A member of the conservative Federalist Society, he has earned praise from both liberals and conservatives over the course of his career. The class was co-taught by Ashley Grabowski, a lawyer and Federal District Court clerk who, like the judge, is an adjunct professor at the law school. …
Mr. Damsky said he assumed that it was the judge who graded his paper. He also said that the judge “is not a white nationalist.”
“Don’t get me wrong,” he added. “I would prefer it if he was.”
Students took their complaints to Ms. McAlister, the interim dean. She addressed the granting of the award to Mr. Damsky in at least two town-hall-style meetings, according to an email she wrote to students and an article in The Independent Florida Alligator, the student newspaper. In the February email, the dean wrote that the law school, as a public institution, was bound by the First and 14th Amendments, meaning that no faculty member may “grade down a paper that is otherwise successful simply because he or she disagrees with the ideas the paper advances.” …
One former student, who graduated in May, had his post-graduation job offer rescinded by a large law firm when he told them he had spoken to The New York Times for this article, criticizing Mr. Damsky’s paper and Judge Badalamenti for granting him the award. The student asked not to be identified for fear of jeopardizing other job offers.
Before his suspension, Mr. Damsky had been offered a summer internship in the local prosecutor’s office. But in early April, the prosecutor, Brian Kramer, the state attorney for the Eighth Judicial Circuit of Florida, rescinded the offer.
- ABA Journal, Law Student Who Argued Constitution Protects White People Received Award for Top Grade in Originalism Seminar
- Daily Beast, Trump Judge Gave Jew-Hating Neo-Nazi Coveted Academic Prize
- Huffington Post, Florida Law School Awards Student For Paper Arguing Constitution Is Only For White People
- Tallahassee Democrat, UF Probes Law Student Over 'Abolish Jews' Post, Sparking Free Speech Fight
Update:
Josh Blackman (South Texas; Google Scholar), The New York Times Launches An Unfair Attack On Judge Badalamenti:
The paper of record tars the reputation a former federal defender as part of a broader attack on originalism. …
This article represents the worst of modern-day advocacy journalism. Fausset obviously has no idea how law school seminars are graded, and made no effort to learn. Moreover, it is pretty clear here that there is an ongoing disciplinary proceeding against the student, so no one at the law school is able to comment. Fausset uses that silence to further sully the reputation of everyone involved. …
The entire premise of the NY Times article is that Judge Badalamenti gave a distinguished prize to an avowed white supremacist. But the timeline undermines the narrative. Again, the class concluded in December 2024. But the student's relevant social media posts did not arise until February 2025, and the most egregious statements were made in March 2025. Does Fausset bother explaining whether Badalementi was even aware of the student's comments during the class? No, it is all left to insinuation. …
Judge Badalementi is friends with KBJ. And as a federal defender, he spent his career defending people of color. A quick google search shows that he is on the board of Gentlemen's Quest. This group helps high risk high school students gain entry to college. A quick review suggests that Judge Badalamenti is the only white person on the board. Moreover, the Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaire states that he "served as a volunteer mentor for inner city middle school students in the Tampa community." This is not a white supremacist. Did Fausset even ask Chat GPT about Badalamenti?
These hits on conservatives are so predictable and unfortunate. They slander a good judge who spent his career fighting for the rights of all people, all in service of an attack on originalism.
Josh Blackman (South Texas; Google Scholar), Grading The Controversial Florida Seminar Paper:
Is this the best student note I've ever read? No. Was it executed well from a technical perspective? Yes. Was it thoroughly researched? Yes. Did it present a coherent thesis based on history? Yes. Was it well organized? Not really. The article under-developed the core obstacle–the ratification of the Reconstruction Amendments–and doesn't explain how the Supreme Court would overrule certain landmark precedents. But these sorts of shortcomings are typical of law student papers. What would I give the paper, having never met the student or heard his presentation? Probably a B+ or maybe an A- if I was feeling generous. Then again, I didn't read any of the other papers in the class, so it is tough to compare. And remember, under the syllabus, the final paper is worth only 65% of the final score, so we do not know what other elements the student contributed. A final grade of A or A+ is well within the bounds of reasonable grading.
For contrary views, see:
- Vivia Chen, Now Trending: White Supremacist Legal Scholarship
- Eric Segall (Georgia State), The Descent into Free Speech and Originalism Madness at the University of Florida
- Howard Wasserman (Florida International), About That UF Student Paper
- Howard Wasserman (Florida International), More About UF Courses
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