University of Florida Faces Backlash Over Award for Student’s Racist Constitution Paper

June 24, 2025

A University of Florida law student, Preston Damsky, is at the center of a growing controversy after being awarded for a paper claiming the U.S. Constitution’s preamble, “We the People,” applies exclusively to white individuals.

According to The Huffington Post, the essay argued that non-white people were never intended to have voting rights under the Constitution. It was written for a course on originalism, taught by Judge John L. Badalamenti, a Trump-appointed federal judge, who honored Damsky with a “book award” for the submission.

The incident drew wider attention after Damsky was suspended in March, following a series of inflammatory social media posts. As reported by The New York Times, he wrote that Jews should be “abolished by any means necessary,” labeled former President Trump and Senator Marco Rubio as being “controlled by Jews,” and suggested Guatemalan undocumented immigrants be “done away with by any means necessary.” His online remarks led to his suspension and a campus ban.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/university-of-florida-faces-backlash-over-award-for-student-s-racist-constitution-paper/ar-AA1HkueU?ocid=BingNewsSerp