The University of Florida Levin College of Law. Courtesy of Screenshot
(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 or engage in political or social activism.”
Preston Damsky, 29, received the “book award” for a paper he wrote for a class last fall. In the paper, he argued for the removal of voting rights protections for non-white citizens and orders to kill “criminal infiltrators at the border,” according to the New York Times.
The award for the paper was given to Damsky by Federal Judge John L. Badalamenti, a Trump administration appointee who taught Damsky’s class.
The law school’s interim dean, Merritt McAlister, initially defended Damsky’s accolade, invoking “institutional neutrality,”arguing n in an email to the law school community that professors must not engage in “viewpoint discrimination” and i according to the Times.
McAlister’s argument underscores a growing tension within academia as the Trump administration escalates its campaign against DEI with policies that have seen Holocaust remembrance pages stripped from government websites but allowed far-right sentiments to go unchecked.
After receiving the class award, Damsky, who told the Times that referring to him as a Nazi “would not be manifestly wrong,” doubled down on his incendiary messages. He opened an account on X in which he repeatedly posted antisemitic and white supremacist sentiments.
Carliss Chatman, a visiting law professor at the school during the spring semester, told the Times that she was struck by the response to Damsky’s essay in contrast to her experience at the school.
A class Chatman had proposed titled “Race, Entrepreneurship and Inequality” was renamed by the school’s administration to just “Entrepreneurship” before being added to the catalogue.
“I just find it fascinating that this student can write an article, a series of articles that are essentially manifestoes, and that’s free speech,” Chatman said. “But my class can’t be called ‘Race, Entrepreneurship and Inequality.’”
Shortly after arriving at the school, a number of Jewish and Black students approached Chatman with concerns about Damsky.
“We should not be giving awards to things that advocate for white supremacy and white power,” Chatman told the Times, adding that she believed the award had “emboldened” Damsky to begin posting his racist and antisemitic comments on social media.
In one post on X, Damsky argued that President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio were “controlled by Jews,” a group that he called “the common enemy of humanity,” according to the Times.
In dozens of other posts Damsky made from February to April, he described Jewish people as “parasitizing the West,” described immigrants as “invaders” and advocated for a white ethnostate, according to University of Florida student paper The Independent Florida Alligator.
In a post in late March, Damsky wrote that Jews must be “abolished by any means necessary,” which prompted the school on April 3 to suspend him and issue a trespass order against him, barring him from the university property for three years.
The controversy over Damsky’s antisemitic and racist remarks comes as the Trump administration has cracked down on universities over alleged antisemitism on their campuses stemming from pro-Palestinian protests.
Earlier this month, Florida officials rejected a bid from the university to hire the former president of the University of Michigan to helm the school, citing his response to pro-Palestinian protests on his former campus.
The University of Florida has the highest number of Jewish undergraduate students of any public university in the country with a population of 6,500 Jewish students, or 19% of the student body, according to Hillel International.
Following a request for comment from JTA, the University of Florida replied that they could not provide information on student records or disciplinary processes, but shared that on April 3 the University of Florida Police Department issued a trespass warning to “the person in question.” Administrators haven’t said what led to Damsky’s trespass order, which came following scrutiny of his social media.
In a statement, the University of Florida Hillel condemned Damsky’s rhetoric and said that they hoped the school’s administration would review the policy that allowed him to receive the award for his paper.
“There is no place at UF for this type of hateful rhetoric. We are grateful that the university responded by suspending the student, barring him from campus, increasing police presence around the law school, and initiating disciplinary proceedings aimed at expulsion,” the statement read.
“This “book award” was presented automatically to the student with the top grade in the course, which creates a false impression of endorsement of the student’s work. We hope the administrators will take time to review this policy moving forward,” the statement continued.
On March 21, a University of Florida law professor replied to Damsky’s post calling for the elimination of Jewish people, and asked if he would murder her and her family, according to the Alligator.
In response, Damsky wrote, “surely a genocide of all whites should be an even greater outrage than a genocide of all Jews, given the far greater number of whites.”
One 24-year-old Jewish third-year law student who was only identified by his first name, Daniel, told the Alligator in April that he wanted the law school to denounce Damsky’s views and draw a line between offensive speech and calls for violence.
“From my perspective, it just looks like he got away with it for two years until he threatened a faculty member,” Daniel told the Alligator. “It’s been very concerning. It felt like the administration just thought that they could close their eyes and wait for it to go away.”
McAlister addressed communal outcry over the school’s response to Damsky at a town hall meeting in April in which she said that the law school’s reputation was a “foremost concern” and law school leaders were working with “main campus” to address Damsky’s case, according to the Alligator.
