Land acknowledgments have become standard at academic and political events, including the opening of the Obama Presidential Library and a recent Michigan Democratic event. While supporters insist it merely shows respect for original inhabitants, critics argue it is the ultimate virtue signaling and is increasingly being forced on both speakers and audiences. One critic is Professor Stuart Reges, who teaches at the computer science and engineering school of the University of Washington. He has now received a settlement from the University of Washington, which spent a significant amount of time and resources in response to his mocking of the school’s land acknowledgment.
We previously discussed the case of Professor Reges, who was disciplined because he refused to post the school’s “land acknowledgment” and instead posted an alternative statement. Professor Reges sued the university and various officials in 2022. Professor Reges has declared “Land acknowledgments are performative acts of conformity that should be resisted, even if it lands you in court.”
The defendants included Nancy Allbritton, the Dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Washington, Magdalena Balazinska, Director of the Allen School, UW President Ana Mari Cauce, and the Allen School’s Vice Director Dan Grossman.
After the university encouraged faculty to add a prewritten “Indigenous land acknowledgment” statement to their syllabi, Reges decided to write his own statement. He has now been told that, while the university statement is optional, his statement is unacceptable because it questions the indigenous land claim of the Coast Salish people.
The school provided a recommended statement for all faculty to post and/or read to their students at the first of every course:
“The University of Washington acknowledges the Coast Salish peoples of this land, the land which touches the shared waters of all tribes and bands within the Suquamish, Tulalip and Muckleshoot nations.”
Professor Reges disagreed with that statement and expressed his doubts to the faculty while also noting that “Magda” did not want the faculty to discuss such reservations on the email system. That may refer to the Director of the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, Magdalena Balazinska.
Reges’ alternative statement read:
“I acknowledge that by the labor theory of property the Coast Salish people can claim historical ownership of almost none of the land currently occupied by the University of Washington.”
The labor theory (which I teach) generally refers to John Locke’s theory. In his Second Treatise, Locke laid the foundation for property as a divine gift of God that began in the state of nature, where all was created in common by God. Reges declared that these tribes, indigenous people, “can claim historical ownership of almost none of the land and that the claim of the university land was not sufficiently used or developed to bestow a claim upon the Coast Salish people. That acknowledged group is a broad collection of different groups with ethnic or linguistic associations.”
In his lawsuit, Professor Reges says that, after he stated his own views, the university moved against him.
“On January 4, 2022, the day after Professor Reges’s Computer Science and Engineering 143 class met for the first time, Defendant [Magdalena] Balazinska, Director of the Allen School, sent Professor Reges an email ordering him to remove the statement from his syllabus because it was ‘offensive’ and created a ‘toxic environment.’”
Reges noted that the university allowed other professors “to include modified statements in their syllabi that were more consistent with the University’s recommended statement.” The operative point is that “other faculty at the Allen School continue to include land acknowledgment statements in their syllabi that differ from the University’s own statement, so long as they express a viewpoint consistent with the University’s recommended version.”
According to the complaint, Balazinska then allegedly removed his dissenting statement, and the university emailed his students to apologize for their professor’s “offensive” land acknowledgment opinion and advised them on “three ways students could file complaints against” him. The students were later allegedly told by Balazinska that, according to the complaint, “all students in Professor Reges’s Computer Science and Engineering 143 class section [can] switch into a new ‘shadow’ class section, which would meet at the same time as Professor Reges’s class section.”
Reges notes that the alternative class was a series of recorded lectures, but viewed as a reasonable alternative to being in a class with a professor with a dissenting view on land acknowledgments. Some 170 out of his 500 students took the alternative course.
I previously wrote how universities can use course assignments and other collateral means to isolate dissenting professors in an effort to get them to resign. This is especially true of tenured faculty.
I wrote that:
The Reges case could prove a major challenge to that orthodoxy. All university faculty should have condemned the university’s actions as an attack on academic freedom and freedom of speech, regardless of how they feel about land acknowledgment. The silence, however, is a reflection of how much has changed in higher education.”
It has now resulted in a $600,000 settlement after the university spent massive amounts of public money over four years to fight this lawsuit over the abusive treatment of Professor Reges.
The university settled only after the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled in December that administrators were “liable under the First Amendment for retaliation and viewpoint discrimination.”
Unfortunately, there is no indication that the university officials who created this fiasco will be held accountable in any way. Millions were spent, and years of litigation were triggered by the orthodoxy of the university. However, these officials will likely be heralded by their colleagues, and nothing is likely to change in the University of Washington’s intellectual echo chamber.
However, according to FIRE, the settlement “stipulates that the university cannot take any further action against Reges.”
Congratulations to Professor Reges and FIRE for a well-fought case with potentially lasting implications in protecting free speech and academic freedom.
The U.S. Constitution acknowledges the conservative and traditional peoples of this land, the land which touches the shared oceans of the American people. Communists didn’t build that, but they’re definitely trying to hijack it.
“The defendants included Nancy Allbritton, the Dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Washington, Magdalena Balazinska, Director of the Allen School, UW President Ana Mari Cauce,”
Well, here might be our first use of the Lindsey Clancy defense should that raging nutjob win her case.
The defendents could now claim that any untoward action by any/or all of the females listed above as defendants were the result of hormonal imbalance and that these 3, plus their cowered Beta male Grossman, made these actions against the professor because it was “that time of the month” for all 4 of them.
How did the “higher” education of our children become the domain of the opponents of education?
How I fought ‘land acknowledgements’ on campus — and won
https://nypost.com/2026/09/03/opinion/how-i-fought-land-acknowledgements-on-campus-and-won/
In his own words.
Meta- Facebook just settled a suit for 17.1 billion dollars over 10 years brought by 47 states, District of Columbia and US territories. For practices harmful to children, including mental harm. That’s a much larger scale and countervailing power than the Professor’s suit here. But they share the same space on what goes into deciding when to settle and for how much. Things like the cost of the litigation budget and amount of exposure to liability. Meta had to be concerned about shareholders as a constituency, and reputational impact on advertising revenue. In the Professor’s case we don’t have a metric for taxpayer protection concern against Washington University’s total outlay to get to settlement. I’m not optimistic that the liberal government in Olympia will have its nose out of joint for the taxpayer hit from the settlement. What I can see is that this settlement was about the stench of compelled speech about land acknowledgment girded with fuzzy edges as camouflage. My takeaway is that the resolution of this dispute advanced the cause of speech and academic freedom toward a very desirable end. A balanced university in search for the truth. And equally, students graduating with critical thinking knowhow to likewise discern truth.
I am finishing my second week of college today.
All the classes syllabus have really generic, legal like statements to inclusion, title IX, and sustainability. Every professor just noted them and did not bother to read them. One professor even commented on how she “had” to have a syllabus with an eye roll.
Good on these professor’s winning against wokeism.
Have you heard the one about three Woke feminists and a sympathizer Jew?
Why is it always the same story about this crazy?
FIRE brought this case for Reges. Here is their statement on its outcome:
https://www.fire.org/news/washington-professor-who-parodied-university-land-acknowledgment-wins-600k-settlement
Nicely done
Kudos to Professor Reges (and his attorneys) for winning the case and getting a good monetary return. I also am happy the 9th Circuit backed him up and also forestalled further legal harassment. We need a groundswell of further cases like this so that this virtue signalling becomes extinct .
The left-wing imagination imposes a model of oppression and victimhood on history. Yet the movement of peoples, before the establishment of States, was the historical norm. The anglo-saxons moved into England, the Romans earlier moved into Italy, and the Greeks into Greece. Only borders stopped this movement. Oddly, Americans leftists want to eliminate our Southern border.
Funny how the loudest voices screaming about “stolen land” and making land acknowledgments refuse to leave. They build schools on stolen land yet refuse to open the doors and dorms to “native” peoples. They live in houses on stolen land yet refuse to share them with “native” families who are often living in abject poverty. In this regard, they are very much like those leftists screaming “no one is illegal on stolen land” who refuse, when given the chance, to house even a single illegal alien in their own homes.
I thought the article is about free speech, not stolen land.
Read it more carefully
“It has now resulted in a $600,000 settlement after the university spent massive amounts of public money . . .” (JT)
There needs to be a new law:
Any public university employee who loses such a suit is *personally* responsible for 25% of the judgment.
Perhaps then the struggle-session fascists will think twice before usurping the civil rights of dissenters.
A law that targets a group isn’t a law its a stupid conservative’s delusional mindset.
Huh?
Wha’choo tawkin’ ’bout, Willia?
“There needs to be a new law…”
Unfortunately, that would lead to desirable outcomes only to the extent that courts can be trusted to render reasonable judgments, a premise that appears to be increasingly questionable on a daily basis.
To me, this is a matter of enforcing total conformity to institutional demands, regardless of whether they have any relevance to actual operations. The university offered only minimal reparations to these tribes, refusing to grant them land to address past transgressions, and instead merely required faculty to recite meaningless land acknowledgments. Even liberal faculty should have been outraged by this superficiality, yet they said nothing. It is as if someone stole your bottle of wine and toasted your ownership while drinking it down.
Conformity? It the same in the so called corporate world. Reparations aka damages, again just like in the corporate world. So what then makes academics more evil than CEOs? Everybody is trying to keep their jobs so they tow the line. So what is the problem then?
You seem to confuse a public institution (funded to provide a service) and a private corporation (self-funded, to provide a profit). Reges was hired to provide a teaching service. With that come all the benefits of the constitution. Private corporations hire employees to help provide profit, and agree to requirements when they accept their possession.
“Position” and not “Possession.”
Good
Sadly just like Gibson’s Bakery vs Oberlin College it isn’t the culprits that have to pay up. These little fascist academic tyrants skate away to their next sinecure and they continue being bow tied weaklings trying to be leaders.
WTF? Translate that please.
Well Aristotle, it means the little girl tyrants don’t have to pay so this isn’t going to end.
You can read, barely, but you can’t comprehend.
No Holiday Inn Express for you apparently. Amiright?
As soon as the people who insist on saying that they are occupying stolen land start offering to give it back to whoever they think it was stolen from, I will respect them. Until then, it’s a stupid virtue signal.
Well done Professor. If those who do these “land acknowledgements” actually cared they would give the land back to the people whom they say it was stolen from. They don’t. They won’t. Because it’s all far left, whiny, pandering, virtue signaling.🎯