This Law Student Got Top Honors for Arguing Only White People Should Vote

As universities nationwide struggle with campus free speech debates, a Florida law student received academic honors for a paper calling to strip voting rights from all non-white Americans.

A federal judge recently gave the top academic honor in his constitutional law class to a student who argued that voting rights should be stripped from all non-white Americans. The paper called for "shoot-to-kill orders" at the border and warned that allowing non-whites political power would constitute a "terrible crime." a feat which the University of Florida's most prestigious law school deemed worthy of an award.

The University of Florida's Levin College of Law.

Now the 29-year-old law student, Preston Damsky, says calling him a Nazi "would not be manifestly wrong," and is fighting his suspension after posting on social media that Jews must be "abolished by any means necessary." The case has sparked months of turmoil on campus and raised a chilling question: When does "academic neutrality" become complicity with extremism?

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Damsky's White Supremacist Legal Arguments

Damsky's paper was written for a federal judge's seminar on "originalism", the conservative legal theory that interprets the Constitution based on its supposed original meaning. Trump-nominated Judge John Badalamenti, a member of the conservative Federalist Society, taught the class and personally selected Damsky for the "book award" designating him the semester's top student.

The Constitution's preamble that Damsky argued was written exclusively for white people.

The paper's central argument was that "We the People" in the Constitution's preamble referred exclusively to white people. Damsky argued for stripping voting rights from non-whites, giving them ten years to leave the country, and implementing violent border enforcement. He concluded with barely veiled threats of revolutionary action if courts didn't act to ensure white supremacy, warning that without action, the matter would be decided "not by the careful balance of Justitia's scales, but by the gruesome slashing of her sword."

Historical Precedent for Constitutional Exclusion

The argument that the Constitution was written exclusively for white people has a long, bloody history. The Supreme Court's 1857 Dred Scott decision explicitly declared that Black Americans "had no rights which the white man was bound to respect" and were never intended to be citizens.

Dred Scott, whose 1857 decision declared that Black Americans had no constitutional rights.

After the Civil War, white supremacists deployed identical arguments to resist Reconstruction. The Ku Klux Klan's founding documents from the late 1860s contained nearly word-for-word versions of Damsky's constitutional theories. When the 14th and 15th Amendments explicitly extended citizenship and voting rights to formerly enslaved people, segregationists simply argued those amendments were illegitimate, exactly as Damsky does today.

Even among conservative originalists, this interpretation has been thoroughly rejected. As legal scholars note, mainstream conservative constitutional theory argues that the Constitution "tilts toward liberty" for all people, and that the post-Civil War amendments "washed away whatever racial taint" existed in the original document.

White Nationalist Academic Strategy

White supremacist movements have always understood that legitimacy comes through intellectual respectability. In the early 20th century, eugenicists gained credibility by publishing in academic journals and teaching at prestigious universities. Their "scientific" racism provided intellectual cover for immigration restrictions, forced sterilizations, and eventually, genocide.

Early 20th-century eugenics materials.

Today's white nationalists follow the same playbook. They dress up ancient prejudices in academic language, submit them to scholarly forums, and point to any acceptance as proof of mainstream validity. When a federal judge rewards such work with top academic honors, it provides exactly the institutional endorsement extremists crave.

Damsky embodied this strategy perfectly. In interviews, he described reading white nationalist authors like Sam Francis and racial superiority advocate Richard Lynn as foundational to his worldview. But instead of distributing flyers on campus or holding rallies, he channeled his extremism through formal legal scholarship, complete with footnotes and constitutional citations.

The strategy worked. Until his social media posts became too explicit to ignore, Damsky had secured a summer internship with a prosecutor's office and was on track to graduate with honors from Florida's most prestigious law school.

University Response and Institutional Neutrality

When students and faculty raised concerns about rewarding white supremacist scholarship, law school administrators retreated behind claims of "institutional neutrality" and "academic freedom." Interim Dean Merritt McAlister defended the award, arguing that professors couldn't engage in "viewpoint discrimination" and must maintain neutrality on controversial topics.

This response reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of what neutrality means when confronting extremism. As universities across the country grapple with similar challenges—my alma mater Yale recently adopted new guidelines limiting institutional statements on political issues, for example—they risk falling into the same trap that has historically enabled extremist movements.

Campus free speech debates.

In the 1930s, some American universities maintained "neutrality" while faculty openly embraced fascist ideas. During the civil rights era, Southern institutions claimed "academic freedom" while resisting integration and providing intellectual cover for segregation. The pattern is clear: institutional neutrality becomes a shield for extremism when administrators refuse to distinguish between legitimate scholarly debate and ideological violence.

Campus Free Speech Debates

Today's campus free speech debates often obscure this historical reality. Conservative groups like the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education argue that universities have become hostile to conservative viewpoints, pointing to speech codes and trigger warnings as evidence of liberal bias. Meanwhile, students of color and other marginalized groups increasingly argue that unrestricted speech creates hostile environments that undermine their ability to learn and participate fully in academic life.

Student protests at Yale.

But the Damsky case reveals something more sinister than typical campus political tensions. A federal judge used his position to validate and reward scholarship explicitly calling for the disenfranchisement of non-white Americans and hinting at violent enforcement mechanisms.

The University of Florida has the largest Jewish undergraduate population in the country. Its student body is 48 percent white, 22 percent Hispanic, 10 percent Asian, and 5 percent Black. When administrators chose to honor Damsky's work, they sent a clear message about whose voices and safety truly matter in academic spaces.

Institutional Validation of Extremism

The most dangerous aspect of the Damsky case is how easily those views found institutional validation. Judge Badalamenti declined to explain his decision to honor Damsky's work. The law school administration initially defended the award. The broader academic community remained largely silent until media attention forced a response.

The Federalist Society, of which Judge Badalamenti is a member.

As white nationalist movements increasingly target college campuses for recruitment—the Southern Poverty Law Center documented over 250 incidents across 150 campuses in recent years—universities must develop more sophisticated approaches to these challenges. Claims of neutrality and procedural fairness aren't adequate when confronting movements that explicitly seek to undermine the democratic values universities supposedly champion.

The stakes extend far beyond any individual campus. As extremist movements gain political influence and target democratic institutions, universities' responses to campus extremism become tests of institutional character. When academic institutions reward white supremacist scholarship with top honors, they provide exactly the legitimacy these movements need to advance their broader political agenda.

Universities can continue providing academic legitimacy to white supremacist movements, or they can develop the institutional courage to defend democratic values while protecting genuine academic freedom. The future of American higher education may depend on which path they choose.

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But here's the terrifying reality: It's only getting worse.

White nationalist movements have learned that legitimacy comes through academic respectability. They're infiltrating law schools, publishing in scholarly journals, and securing prestigious internships, all while university administrators look the other way.

Meanwhile, universities that once promised to combat extremism are backing down. Other schools are quietly removing diversity programs and defunding racial justice research, terrified of political backlash.

The reality is stark: we need independent journalism that can't be silenced by university boards or threatened by federal funding cuts.

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🎓 At 5% paid subscribers: I could investigate how many other Preston Damskys are being quietly rewarded in law schools nationwide.

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🚨 At 20% paid subscribers: We could develop a rapid response system to expose academic legitimization of white supremacy before these students graduate into positions of power.

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References

1. Fausset, Richard. "A White Nationalist Wrote a Law School Paper Promoting Racist Views. It Won Him an Award." The New York Times, June 21, 2025.

2. Multiple authors. "Letters: A Law School's Award for a Racist Paper." The New York Times, July 6, 2025.

3. Steeves, Brian. "Balancing Free Speech and the Inclusive Campus." Association of Governing Boards, December 19, 2023.

4. Carrillo, Sequoia. "Schools try to balance freedom of speech and security during student protests." NPR, April 23, 2024.

5. Cooper, Howard and Rachel Hutchinson. "Free Speech on College Campuses—Legal Analysis Post 2023/24 Pro-Palestine Protests." Boston Bar Journal, October 31, 2024.

6. Behrent, Michael C. "A Tale of Two Arguments about Free Speech on Campus." AAUP Academe Magazine, Winter 2019.

7. Moses, Nora. "Students divided on Yale's decision on institutional voice." Yale Daily News, November 5, 2024.

8. Beacon Staff. "Yale Stops Short of Institutional Neutrality with New Public Comment Guidelines." The Buckley Beacon, November 4, 2024.