“… At the University of Florida, the story of the book award took a dramatic turn … 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.
… 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.”
Mr. Damsky said his ideas were well formed before he started law school, shaped by reading authors like
Sam Francis, a white nationalist, and Richard Lynn, who argued for white racial superiority and eugenics.
He grew up around Los Angeles and studied history at the University of California, Santa Barbara;
he wanted to become a prosecutor, he said, after watching progressive-minded California prosecutors adopt policies that he believed were soft on crime.
… a draft of a paper he wrote for a different class … also argued the Constitution was written exclusively for white people. It went on to suggest that nonwhites should be stripped of voting rights and given 10 years to move to another country.
… Carliss Chatman, an associate law professor at Southern Methodist University, began a stint as a visiting scholar at the school … She had proposed teaching a class during her time there called “Race, Entrepreneurship and Inequality.” But administrators at the law school changed the name to “Entrepreneurship,” she said, before listing it in the course catalog.
… “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,” Ms. Chatman said, referring to Mr. Damsky, “but my class can’t be called ‘Race, Entrepreneurship and Inequality.’”…”