A White Nationalist Wrote a Law School Paper Promoting Racist Views. It Won Him an Award.
- Thread starter bnew
- Start date
feelosofer
#ninergang
the founding cacs already did that after signed declaration of independence while purposely allowing slavery to persist.
That demon cac is correct. The founding cacs only had one group in mind when they were drafting out founding documents. America was built by white supremacists, for white supremacists. How many times do the ws have to tell us before we understand them?
And this only made the news because he's an antisemite because clearly, he support from multiple government involved individuals and organizations.
I'm not disagreeing that the founding fathers meant Equality was for white men but what I am saying is that they are evolving in a way that is mean to close the loopholes. Over time we have worked around it for it to be more inclusive of other races and ethnicities (on paper at least). What I am saying is that they are trying to rewrite the frame work in response to the evolving corporo-facist landscape.
The Declaration of Independence is not the same thing as the Constitution, brother.
That demon cac is correct. The founding cacs only had one group in mind when they were drafting out founding documents. America was built by white supremacists, for white supremacists. How many times do the ws have to tell us before we understand them?
And this only made the news because he's an antisemite because clearly, he support from multiple government involved individuals and organizations.
And for the purposes of all civil rights lawsuits, basic protections from government overreach, and basic property rights - he is not correct.
Understanding the origins of the United States as a white supremacist settler-colony does not mean that the Reconstruction Amendments are invalid - nor does it mean that we should rout out support for strong civil rights protections.
Fillerguy
Veteran
I never said the DoL and the constitution were the same thing. The founding cacs created the DoL with the intent set forth the ideas and principles behind a just and fair government, while maintaining several institutions that are the antithesis of sais principles.
All I'm saying is student cac has a point, if he's wanted to follow "originalism". Several powerful, government aligned, legal scholars clearly think so too. They didn't write the following with their wives in mind, let alone someone of my skin tone
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness"
Devilinurear
Veteran
fukk Florida
bourgeoisie tall freak
Superstar
if they are being neutral on the topics then he probably did technically have the best paper given he is 30 and in school with students 10 years younger. i remember in my grad school the older students used to be the shining examples in class and the rest of us are just barely adulting 
It’s the foundation of the modern world. We’ll have to go to a Mad Max world and start over if we honestly want to change it.
The Florida law student who wrote a paper with white nationalist views has Jewish ancestry
Preston Damsky, who has spouted antisemitic rhetoric on social media, said his family lineage doesn't have an impact on his thinking.
www.nbcnews.com
The Florida law student who wrote a paper with white nationalist views has Jewish ancestry
Preston Damsky, who has spouted antisemitic rhetoric on social media, said his family lineage doesn't have an impact on his thinking.
The University of Florida's Levin College of Law in Gainesville.Jacob M. Langston / The New York Times via Redux
July 4, 2025, 7:00 AM EDT
By Polly DeFrank and Corky Siemaszko
A University of Florida law student went viral online and became a campus pariah after classmates circulated two of his academic papers that argued in favor of white nationalist views — and amid the backlash he shared antisemitic messages on X.
But, as it turns out, the student has some Jewish ancestry.
Preston Damsky stoked outrage on campus — leading to at least two town halls during the spring semester — after penning an academic paper in the fall that argued that the Founding Fathers had conceived of the U.S. as white country and it should remain that way. Damsky questioned the constitutionality of certain amendments like those granting birthright citizenship and barring the government from denying anyone the right to vote based on race.
As students began circulating the paper and expressing outrage, Damsky shared scores of posts on X against Jewish people.
“Jews must be abolished by any means necessary,” he posted on X in March.
Damsky is the great-grandson of Jews who were labeled “Hebrew” by border control agents when they immigrated to the U.S. over a century ago. And he has grandparents buried in a Jewish cemetery in the Hollywood Hills. He said he is not Jewish and his ancestry isn’t relevant to his views.
Still, his most recent social media posts are littered with anti-Jewish tropes.
“To the Jew, the Gentile is at best a sheep to be shorn,” Damsky, 29, posted on X on May 24.
Damsky, in a telephone interview with NBC News, confirmed that he has Jewish ancestry on his father’s side.
“The positions I have taken don’t depend on who my paternal grandparents or great-grandparents were,” he said. “I never met my paternal grandfather. And I reject that who they were has any effect on my thinking as a matter of logic.”
Damsky said he was not raised Jewish. “In fact, I’ve never set foot in a synagogue,” he said.
Damsky also said he was quoted correctly when he told The New York Times that it “would not be manifestly wrong” to refer to him as a Nazi.
The law student first caught the eye of classmates during the fall semester when the draft of a paper he wrote for a legal class, which also argued that the Constitution was written exclusively for white people, began circulating among his classmates, according to published reports.
The same semester, Damsky took an originalism seminar, led by U.S. District Judge John Badalamenti, who had been appointed to the bench by President Donald Trump in June 2020. Originalism is a legal approach championed by conservatives that says questions about the Constitution should focus on its original meaning.
When the seminar concluded, some of Damsky’s classmates were outraged to learn from the law school website that he had been given a top academic honor called a “book award” for being the top student in the class and that more than half of his grade hinged on a paper he wrote titled “National Constitutionalism.”
In the paper, which was also posted on the school’s website, Damsky embraced the idea that the U.S. was conceived of as a white country and this literal interpretation should be followed today.
“If we abandon that principle while turning over America to a non-White majority, a majority that will not share a common, historic commitment to anything, what else shall we abandon along the way?” Damsky wrote.
But Damsky’s family history — culled from immigration and census records, newspaper notices, obituaries and various other documents collected by NBC News and the Ancestry genealogical website — shows he shares ancestry with some of the very people he spews hate speech about.
His great-grandfather Harry Damsky was a Jew from Lodz, a Polish city that was then part of Russia, who emigrated to Canada in 1910 before eventually settling in Port Chester, New York, according to U.S. census records, his draft card and obituary.
His great-grandmother Zelda was born in Kieff (Kyiv) in what was then Russia and emigrated to Canada in 1911, the records show.
They had two children, Henry and Sadie, according to Toronto birth records.
In April 1920, the Damsky family immigrated to the U.S. via Buffalo, New York, and were described as “Hebrew” on the official “List Or Manifest Of Alien Passengers Applying For Admission.”
After being widowed, Harry Damsky married Sarah Kuretz, who was born in Lithuania, according to U.S. census records. A tailor by profession, he also outlived his second wife and died in 1958 in the Bronx, according to his obituary.
Henry Damsky, who was Preston Damsky’s grandfather and Harry Damsky’s son, also lived for a time in Port Chester before migrating west to the Los Angeles area. He is buried at a Jewish cemetery in Los Angeles called Mount Sinai Hollywood Hills, according to the cemetery’s records.
His wife, Georgette Louise Boucher Damsky, was Preston Damsky’s paternal grandmother. She was born in Paris, France, and is also buried at Mount Sinai Hollywood Hills, according to cemetery records.
Damsky said his grandmother wasn’t Jewish. In 1949, she performed in a play at a Purim party that was produced by the Hebrew Ladies’ Benevolent Association, according to The Daily Item, a Port Chester newspaper.
“She wasn’t Jewish, she was a Catholic from France,” Damsky said. “She met my grandfather after the war, meaning World War II.”
Preston Damsky’s father, Howard Damsky, was just 54 when he died in 2015 at a hospital on Sunset Boulevard, records show.
“My dad wasn’t religious,” Damsky said. “He liked watching drag racing. That’s how he spent his Sundays. Saturdays were for baseball.”
Damsky’s mother, Laura, lives in a Los Angeles suburb and did not return a phone call for comment.
“I don’t know what specific liturgy she holds close to her heart,” Damsky said in a message exchanged via X. “It’s entirely irrelevant to my beliefs.”
Damsky remains enrolled at UF’s Levin College of Law, university spokesperson Cynthia Roldan said in an email to NBC News. But he’s not welcome on campus.
He was issued a trespass warning on April 3 that bars him from setting foot on the campus for three years, Roldan added.
Citing a state statute, Roldan said she could not say why Damsky was banished from the campus “in the interest of safety and security.”
Prior to the trespass warning, Damsky had been posting antisemitic screeds on his X account, though it’s not clear if those specific posts had anything to do with the school’s decision.
“The trespass order followed months of internal concern within the law school over Damsky’s rhetoric, which sharply escalated in late March over his social media accounts,” student newspaper The Independent Florida Alligator reported on April 21.
The University of Florida has the largest number of Jewish undergraduate students of any public university in the country, according to Hillel International.
Facing backlash from angry students, the law school’s interim dean, Merritt McAlister, held an April 9 town hall during which she “defended the law school’s commitment to upholding the First Amendment and maintaining institutional neutrality,” the student newspaper reported.
Badalamenti, 51, also found himself targeted by critics.
When asked why Badalamenti believed Damsky deserved the award, his spokesman referred to a statement released last week by McAlister, who said the judge “had no knowledge of this student’s history at the law school or his deeply held personal views.”
“The professor took the paper on its face — as a student paper attempting to use originalist methodology to reach a detestable and extreme position,” it said. “As abhorrent as the paper’s thesis may be, that work still falls within the bounds of academic freedom and the First Amendment, and, as such, was graded consistent with the grading standard for the course.”
McAlister’s statement appeared to echo the Feb. 10 email she sent to the UF law school staff in which she insisted that grading does not “involve an ideological litmus test” and defended Damsky’s First Amendment rights. That email was obtained by The Alligator.
Damsky insisted he was being persecuted for propagating unpopular ideas and vowed to fight any attempt by the university to expel him.
“You know,” he told the newspaper, “I’m not, like, a psychopathic ax murderer.”
MajesticLion
Veteran
There's a large swath of academia that has always been prone to things like this. Awards get handed out for well-presented BS, and it still boils down to...BS.
WaveMolecules
Superstar
ironically it seems like he is also confirming that systemic racism is imbedded in the very foundation of the country.
In the open
ORDER_66
I am The Wrench in all your plans....
That demon cac is correct. The founding cacs only had one group in mind when they were drafting out founding documents. America was built by white supremacists, for white supremacists. How many times do the ws have to tell us before we understand them?
And this only made the news because he's an antisemite because clearly, he support from multiple government involved individuals and organizations.
this isn't wrong and the white boy wasn't wrong. it's the reason why the abolitionist john brown created a new provisional constitution because, even at that time, they knew the subtext behind "we the people" meant propertied white men. and it was confirmed for them via the dredd Scott decision. it's the reason why conservatives and the alt-right champion "originalism" because this is the original context and why they view black americans citizenship as illegitimate.
the preamble to the provisional constitution :
the reception:
i think the same argument applies here, although it appears race neutral, when the founders said "all men" they were referring to landed/propertied white men.
Wargames
One Of The Last Real Ones To Do It
I will just say this the legal field has always been conservative, but even the majority of the conservatives are like WTF is going on. Every day from the MAGA motherfukkers see shyt that goes against everything that I thought I knew.
