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.
Thought For The Day: Homo sapiens may be argued as “indigenous” only to certain areas of Africa, based on the currently known fossil record, after which was the diaspora into what are now Europe, Asia, the Americas, Australia and the several island nations.
And what of the North American record? Suppose that there is credible evidence that a certain area was “owned” by Tribe A, which was taken over or displaced by Tribe B? Who is/was the original owner which the institution must acknowledge (i.e., at least tacitly apologize to)?
On the other extreme we have Donald Trump who arbitrarily decides he’s going to rename Lake Ontario. Who knew that presidents had the authority to rename major bodies of water on a whim?
But more disturbing is the timing of Trump’s trade war with Canada. Every time Trump starts these disputes, with NATO allies, Putin turns up the aggression in Europe. It’s as though Trump is sending signals.
The so-called ‘Russia Hoax’ was no hoax. Trump’s a stooge for Putin. And it couldn’t be any more clear than if Trump was caught on tape taking envelopes of cash from Putin.
Do you suppose President Donald J. Trump will rename California, giving it a truly American name such as Somerset, Cornwall, Essex, Cumberland, Kingston, Cumbria, or Gwynedd?
Let’s rename Donald Trump ‘Putin’s Stooge’
You liberal trolls must be the most boring people in the world. Literally every one of your comments is some variation of “Whatabout Trump”. You can’t think of a single other thing to say. Being around you at any kind of social gathering must be worse than prison. You are so, so, so boooooooooooooring.
Estovir, boring is 50 fake names parroting the same talking points. And the lack of traffic on this forum indicates how boring that is.
There is no comparison between renaming a lake versus coercing people to say things they don’t believe. One is a zany weird thing that doesn’t violate anyone’s rights, the other is compelling speech. One is amusing, the other is tyrannical. So they are not “opposite extremes” as you imply.
#WeAreEstovir
Apple was coerced into changing the name on the US version of their mapping software, probably to avoid further tyrannical attacks by Trump.
When you go into a store and a greeter says “Hello” or “Welcome”, that is compelled speech. If they make up their own phrase they get fired.
I come to this site to read intelligent, well-reasoned commentary. I am afraid your post failed miserably to satisfy my expectations.
The most liberal federal circuit found that the fundamentalist religious zealots in charge of the University of Washington had gone too far. Good. Those zealots should be publicly shamed for their extremist tactics of forcing professors to conform to their orthodoxy or be punished. University administrators like Magdalena Balazinska are small-minded tin-pot dictators who get paid way, way too much public money to be idiots.
#WeAreEstovir
“Big Education” is a national monopoly that must be broken up pursuant to antitrust laws, placing education in the free markets of the private sector.
Unions are wholly unnecessary, unconstitutional, and communist criminal organizations.
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.”
I am not an attorney so I do not know if my following comment is actionable in a court of law but I think it should be. The Left is killing people with their incessant outrage, violence and fomenting divisions amongst people. Universities, political agitprop organizations, and those that fund them should be litigated to death based on medical evidence.
Atherosclerosis is caused my multiple factors, all converging on endothelial dysfunction – injury to the inner lining cardiovascular vessels that “carry” the blood. Ligands from chemical entities (e.g. lipids, cigarette smoking toxins, hyperglycemia from type II diabetes) and ligands from the realm of physics (e.g. hypertension, hypoxia, psychological stress) all trigger the innate immune system to respond to these ligands at the endothelial interface with inflammatory pathways mediators (cytokines). The innate immune system will continue to respond to these ligands until it rids the body of them. The problem is that these ligands do not go away unless if we stop the behaviors that promote these injurious ligands. A new commentary article by top tier researchers in the Netherlands conclude that the innate immune system is habitually triggered towards an atherosclerotic response vis a vis trained immunity because of todays stressors. Since my line of work is in immuno-cardiovascular HIV research, I found this article instructive and applicable to life today in our disrupted United States.
In conclusion, although psychosocial stress is often an unavoidable part of modern life, the evidence summarized herein shows that its impact extends far beyond mental well-being. Stress can induce long-lasting innate immune cell reprogramming toward a pro-inflammatory phenotype, linking psychosocial factors to chronic inflammation and CVD. Accumulating evidence points to trained immunity as a central mechanism linking psychosocial stress to vascular inflammation and CVD.
Looking forward, research should prioritize unraveling the molecular mechanisms of stress-induced trained immunity in humans. While animal and in vitro models provide important mechanistic insights, they can be only partly translated to humans. Moreover, different types of stressors may exert different effects on innate immune programming and, thus, cardiovascular health. Understanding which stressors most strongly induce trained immunity—and how stress severity and duration, as well as individual differences in vulnerability, modify these effects—will be essential for informing treatment.
Furthermore, future studies should evaluate whether trained immunity triggered by psychosocial stress is reversible, and if so, by which interventions. Possibilities include pharmacologic approaches that modulate innate immune metabolism or epigenetic state, lifestyle interventions, as well as behavioral therapies aimed at reducing perceived stress and improving stress resilience [[99]]. Determining whether these strategies can normalize maladaptive trained immunity could have profound clinical implications. Given that CVD remains the leading cause of mortality worldwide, addressing the immunomodulatory effects of psychosocial stress represents an excellent opportunity to reduce the burden of disease and improve population health.
Touw, D.C.W., El Messaoudi, S., Mulder, W.J.M., Netea, M.G., Slavich, G.M. and Riksen, N.P. (2026), Stress-induced trained immunity—A key mechanism linking psychosocial stress, atherosclerosis, and cardiovascular disease. FEBS Lett. https://doi.org/10.1002/1873-3468.70447
– Estovir, a carry carrying member of Oldmanfromkansas club of Estovirs
💪🏽
Estovir – the phrase “trained immunity” sounds on the surface like a good thing, at least to a layman. But I gather from the above that it’s not a good thing for health and longevity. In your intro, you even link it to an atherosclerotic response, which Google tells me is “the body’s chronic inflammatory and healing reaction to damage in the inner lining of an artery, which leads to the buildup of fatty plaques.” So in this context, trained immunity is bad, right? (Remember, I have no medical training, so I could be off here.)
#WeAreEstovir
Trained immunity is unique to innate immune cells (e.g. monocytes, macrophages, dendritic cells, neutrophils) and other cells (e.g. endothelial cells, vascular smooth muscle cells, fibroblasts) in that they are able to remember ligands that cause perturbations which was thought to be true only of adaptive immune cells (B cells, T cells). Only 5% of all living organisms have an adaptive immune system (vertebrates). Thus 95% of all other living organisms somehow were able to fend off pathogens and damaged associated molecular patterns (any type of injury due) without an adaptive immune system. We have often characterized the adaptive immune system as superior to the innate immune system, which in fact the latter controls the former. Innate immune cells are far more important than we thought. People who died from COVID did so because the innate immune system would not turn off – proinflammatory phenotype.
So if 95% of living organisms have no adaptive immune system then how have they survived for millennia? Trained immunity. Their innate immune cells also remember just like adaptive immune cells but by different mechanisms: epigenetics as opposed go gene rearrangement which is what only 2 types of cells can do in humans: B cells and T cells. No worries. Innate immune cells can remember via epigenetics in the bone marrow before it ever synthesizes new innate immune cells.
For example, our bone marrow synthesizes innate immune cells commensurate to whatever ligands are presented to their unique cells called hematopoietic stem progenitor cells (HSPC). Why is this important?
First, we were wrong about how the body defends itself. This is really important. COVID was mitigated by public health leaders entirely on B cells (antibodies). We did not need repeat boosters because both T cells and HSPC are able to respond to ligands perfectly well. B cells help but that isnt the entire story. We totally misunderstood how the body defends itself against ligands like SARS-CoV2.
Second, trained immunity can be a detriment because it wont stop synthesizing inflammatory mediators even if it is causing injury.
About 50% of people who have suffered myocardial infarctions have normal lipid levels. The paradigm that atherosclerosis is a lipid storage disorder is dead wrong. Inflammation is essential in the initiation and progression of atherosclerosis. Lipids can cause the atherosclerotic process. But other ligands can as well. All of them initiate an immune response to whatever ligand is injuring the endothelial layer. It then continues in the bone marrow via trained immunity. Once that starts, you want it to stop as soon as the ligand resolves, e.g. cigarette smoker quits smoking, obese man with diabetes loses significant weight and in the process is no longer diabetic, etc. You want the trained immunity to no longer “defend” the endothelial layer. However it is not known if that is the case.
My apologies for the dissertation. Im rather passionate about this stuff.
Happy Sabbath!
Shabbat shalom ☺️🎉🎊🥂🏆🎈🎁🍾🥳🍷🍞🍷🍞🍷🍞
“The Left is killing people”
Cutting USAID has acclerated the deaths of nearly 1 million people, on pace with Trump’s failure to contain COVID and it’s killing more than 1 million Americans.
Perhaps if those on the Right would take a chill pill and get with the program they would not be agitated. I am reminded of those Conservatives who moved to exclude Black children from school and lunch counters. Many of those racists are still alive and voting Republican.
“It is estimated that during the period 1492–1832, a total of 1.86 million Spaniards settled in the Americas, and a further 3.5 million immigrated during the post-independence era (1850–1950); the estimate is 250,000 in the 16th century and most during the 18th century, as immigration was encouraged by the new Bourbon dynasty.[6] The indigenous population plummeted by an estimated 80% in the first century and a half following Columbus’s voyages, primarily through the spread of infectious diseases. Practices of forced labor and slavery for resource extraction, and forced resettlement in new villages and later missions were implemented.[7] Alarmed by the precipitous fall in indigenous populations and reports of settlers’ exploitation of their labor, the crown put in place laws to protect their newly converted indigenous vassals. Europeans imported enslaved Africans to the early Caribbean settlements to replace indigenous labor and enslaved and free Africans were part of colonial-era populations. A mixed-race casta population came into being during the period of Spanish rule.”
“In the early 19th century, the Spanish American wars of independence resulted in the secession of most of Spanish America and the establishment of independent nations. Continuing under crown rule were Cuba and Puerto Rico, along with the Philippines, which were all lost to the United States in 1898, following the Spanish–American War, ending its rule in the Americas.”
– Wiki
AI Overview
The Spanish Empire owned, settled, or made sweeping legal claims to vast regions across South America, Central America, and North America, including parts of the modern U.S., Canada’s coast, and Alaska.
Wikipedia lkong ago ceased to be a reliable source for anything the least controversial.
Your post starts with “it is estimated” – more accurate would be “it is speculated”
The FACT is we do not KNOW much about the populations of the Americas before European settlers arrived.
While we have some evidence of multiple migrations from the same small populations in asia over the course of possibly 30,000 years,
And we have evidence of very distinct differences between the populations in north and south america – with Most of the south american populations reaching levels of development comparable to the Egyptians 5000 years ago, conversely most of north america was nomadic stone age hunter gatherers.
There is very limited evidence of “indigenous” populations in north america developing significant agriculture and other advances that enabled the development of towns and fixed long term residences – and most of this was in the southwest. Throughout most of North america populations were nomadic or semi nomadic hunter gatherers.
Who were required to move from place to place frequently as their villages became too polluted to live in The development from temporary villages to permanent towns requires MANY advances, including agriculture, and the development of systems to bring in water and remove effluent – none of which are evident in most of norely exponds on Reges and Lockes “Labor Theory of Property” – but outside of theory – the entire concept of Preoperty rights does not even exist until a group has advance sufficiently to remain in one place for more than a few years. With rare exceptions no indians in North America reached that level.
That also means that they were incapable of sustaining large populations.
We mythologizes the great planes Indian horsemen – forgetting that there were no horses in the new world prior to the arrival of Europeans.
There were no horses and no horsemen, no domesticated livestock – atleast not in north america. little in the way of agriculture. Very little in the way of permanent settlement – atleast in north america.
There are some estimates that the “indiginous” population of north america was 35-045 Million people prior to Columbus.
That is extremely dubious. Numbers that large can not survive in an essentially a stone age level of development.
Your tome further claims that natives were ravaged by diseases brought by europeans.
This is only possible if the populations were SMALL and separated from Europe and Asia for milenia.
Diseses will naturally die out in small populations spread over vast areas for millenia.
Most human diseases are the direct consequence of humans living in one place, developing larger populations, and living in close proximity to domesticated animals.
There is no disease of Europeans that did not also impact Africans and Asians – and the peoples of the western hemisphere came from Asia.
The absence of immunity to European disease requires both LONG separation from the old world, a significant lack of development beyond the stone age. and small isolated populations.
It is highly unilkely that the population of North America at the time of columbus was very large.
Beyond all the above – virtually all cultures have burial customs – we have no evidence of graves of large populations in North america. We also have no evidence of some mass dike off or millions from disease. We find skeletons of early hominids that are millions of years old. A mass die off of 45M people in north america in the 1500’s would leave extensive evidence we could find today.
This is not to say that disease from the old world did not kill people from the new world – only that even if 90% of the original inhabitants died from european diseases – that is still 90% of a very small number of people to start with.
South and North America, Canada, and Alaska are the property of the Indians who own everything, except that all of that was the domain of Spain by adverse possession for 3 or 4 hundred years.
Wikipedia is held to a higher standard than the Moscow School of Propaganda where John Say works.
He also doesn’t know that nomadic peoples don’t have large graveyards nor that North America is a very large area of land.
Large populations are necessary to get the transmission rate high enough. This is why COVID, for example, initially ran rampant in New York City and the larger population areas in California and took much longer to reach small towns in rural America.
You can look at the Wikipedia article and find all the primary references that support that article. You won’t acknowledge they do because that would require admitting you are a propagandist.
“Land acknowledgement” is a political testimonial not a legal treaty claim.
Indigenous peoples had zero conception in the ideas of land ownership. Most were nomadic and transient with patterns of wildlife migration. The tribes that grew crops practiced slash and burn in most cases and rotated between planting season as they depleted their crop areas. Conflict between neighboring tribes over control of productive hunting areas were common and the severity of battle was dependent upon the competition over supply and demand of food. There was also the common practice of enslaving each other and kidnapping of women both means of bringing new DNA into a tribal community where most all related to another. Therefore, the acknowledgment offered should be that yes these tribes once occupied the region and were eventually displaced, ending an ancient culture and ushering in a modern era…unfortunately.
Their concept of land ownership was different than ours, it was communal, land held in common. Remember Pennsylvania was bought, it was as wide as a man could walk in a day and a half. They used a relay of hired runners to cheat the Indians.
https://www.britannica.com/event/Walking-Purchase
That said the notion that the Native Americans still hold title is ridiculous. No stone age culture was going to survive when an advanced culture found the Americas.
The current Native Americans also were not the first people in the land. There were already indigenous people here when they crossed The Bering land bridge. Those people like the current Native Americans were conquered or assimilate through marriages by the current Native Americans, just like the current Native Americans were conquered and assimilated by the Europeans. I am a product of that myself with both Native American and European ancestry.
The only “native Americans” are citizens of and in the United States.
The Indians were not American; they were Asian.
The Indians were Asiatic nomads who arrived here by way of the Alaskan Land Bridge long before 1789, when America was established.
All humans are African, because that’s where humans originated. The first people inhabiting the American continent were, by definition, Americans.
So true. Start with a dearth of surveyors and surveys. No one knows what the truck any claimant is talking about – they just claim the whole world, planetary system, galaxy, and universe. Indians had no County Assessor and County Recorder.
The Spanish claim trumps the Indian claims sans a valid treaty.
The fact that only @170 of the 500 students (roughly one third) chose the alternative forum–even in a[n] historically Leftist state like Washington,— tells me that there is still hope for our country.- That is to say, our young thinkers are still willing to listen to more than one side to a story, critically think, and having done so, have the courage of their own convictions, whether for or against, regarding land acknowledgements. THAT, my friends, is education at its best.
wishes for a Nice weekend to all.
I’ve already been struck in the shin with a whacked croquet ball from last night. Today we painted red lips around the bruise. In retrospect, maybe it was the labor of a disguised arrowhead that struck me. (after all, we set the court up in a public park.)
That is to say, our young thinkers are still willing to listen to more than one side to a story, critically think, and having done so, have the courage of their own convictions, whether for or against, regarding land acknowledgements.
I’ve been saying this for years on this forum. Does anyone listen to me? Nahhhhhhh
University kids today do indeed seek mentors, even if they may not run up to you on bended knee. They are hungry, lonely, plagued with multitudes of under developed emotional and psychological stages, and generally dislike their own cohort. I’ve long asked (begged) many of you to unplug from the internet, hit the streets and show others the way for these kids. Pro tip: God is not found in the bathroom, for you irreligious types
Don’t give up on our youth just because of the actions of a few. Show them the way. yes, that means you – all of you.
Estovir says, “I’ve been saying this for years on this forum.”
No you haven’t.
Most of your contribution is about how many people come up to you, seeking your opinion, In your office, In your church, At the gym where you want us all to know about. How about when you told us how people came up to your father to compliment you, that was a good one.
Estie, be a good boy. Try to be a little more humble, because bragging speaks to weak self-confidence.
When a person recalls people saying good things about his father, that is not arrogant. It is honoring his father, which is virtuous – and, indeed, part of the foundational moral law of Western Civilization (the 10 commandments).
#WeAreEstovir
I doubt the opinion was the deciding factor over the choice of coddling of a live professor versus a personal reliance on their ability to study and learn from presented materials.
Compelled land acknowledgments are draconian and fascist. They are anathema to the principles of academic freedom that *should* characterize higher education. Since UW is a public institution, its imposition of compelled speech also violates the First Amendment.
#WeAreEstovir
In any other situation, such as a liberal at a more conservative establishment, you’d be the first publicly wondering why they didn’t just comply.
Love it. Thanks Professor
The most that can be said is that the Coast Salish people were the original colonizers of the area. But that assumes that when they first arrived they did not push out even earlier native colonizers. A great deal of that kind happened among native peoples in the pre-1492 Americas.
One doesn’t need to establish a provenance of ownership when the topic is that the current holder stole it from someone else.
Theft isn’t forgiven by having stolen it from someone who had previously stolen it – if that’s the belief then returning it to the original owner rather than justifying the theft is the moral thing to do. Buying a painting from a Nazi who stole it from a Jew doesn’t make it a legitimate purchase, nor would stealing a painting from a Nazi who stole it from a Jew be justifiable.
JD Vance recently said the conflict with Iran is not really a war.
He raised eyebrows at a White House press briefing on Friday by further telling reporters that he “wouldn’t call World War 2 a war.”
“When that supposed ‘world war’ was going on, Antarctica was totally at peace,” he said. “The last time I checked, Antarctica was part of the world. So do the math.”
Doubling down, he argued that World War 2 could not be a war because “World War 1 wasn’t a war, either,” adding, “That was a tussle, at best.”
Lashing out at the assembled press, Vance said, “You folks need to be very careful when you say things like ‘world war this’ or ‘world war that.’ If anyone’s going to start a world war, it’s going to be President Trump.”
Whatever it is, Trump is losing it.
President Trump is just tearing down Tehran to build a giant ballroom.
No, no, no! “Our” President has said, multiple times, that we’ve won the war with Iran.
He also single-handedly won the police action in Vietnam. Why doesn’t anyone believe him?
Can Iranian citizens protest gas and grocery prices, all prices?
Their absolutely worthless rial is currently $1,374,600.00 to 1 rial.
Yes they can if they want to be shot.
Where can I get one (rial, I mean)?
What does that have to do with land acknowledgements. Do you have mental issues where you can’t stay on topic because you are consumed by thinking about the Trump administration 24/7?
#WeAreEstovir
Great comment OMFK! Also, love the name.
Signed
Hullbobby
Executive member of the Council of Estovir
Bobby – welcome to the Council of Estovir, it’s good to have you on board.
#WeAreEstovir
More of his Bull Hobby?
JD Vance says multiple Indian babies are preferable to American babies, while the American fertility rate is in a “death spiral” at 1.6 and falling, more Americans die than are born, and foreigners are conquering the country.
Now that’s a patriotic American who should be president of the United States of America.
That is an ignorant comment. First, he never said that, you’re just making it up. Second, there is no difference between American babies generally and American babies who are born to a parent of Indian heritage, so what you said doesn’t even make sense. Third, it is undisputed that a fertility rate of 2.1 is needed to replace the population, meaning that anything less than that is a problem, unless the country in question makes up for it through immigration, which America is doing. Such immigration is only a problem if the new population refuses to assimilate, which is generally not as true here as in Europe. That’s why social stability is more fragile in European nations than in the US.
So, given that your sarcastic and ignorant comment appears to rest on made-up facts, maybe next time you grace us with a smelly turd you might provide evidence of what you are even talking about.
#WeAreEstovir
For your edification, the Founders established a Nation, its Law, and its Population within the year of adoption of their Constitution. What exactly went wrong? Was there a legal constitutional amendment? Who decided to deviate from the intent and design of the American Founders and their fundamental and statutory law in their Nation, America?
To wit,
Naturalization Acts of 1790, 1795, 1798, 1802
United States Congress, “An act to establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization,” March 26, 1790
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, That any Alien being a free white person, who shall have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States for the term of two years, may be admitted to become a citizen thereof….
Civil war updated all that buddy or didnt you get the message from Appomattox?
Ah, so right. The American Founders established a government by gun and kinetic military force, not legislative bodies. Is that correct? All that —-ing Lincoln ever had to do was pass a bill that would abolish slavery. He couldn’t, so he started killing everyone. The good old wholly unconstitutional civil war – governance by death.
Thank you so much for posting something that is totally irrelevant to the current discussion. Squirrel!
Did Moronymous take a sick day? Or does this topic not matter all that much to their employers? Hm.
The metric of troll activity is always proportionate to the topic. This piece does not impact the midterms in particular. Coincidence? I think not. The modern left is just sad. Pathetic. Predictable. Desperate. Hateful. Anti-Constitution. Jeffries is a clown that makes actual clowns bow down to his clownishness.
Nevertheless: this is no longer a party even worth considering, it is no longer a party, and I sure hope something sane takes their place when they inevitably disintegrate, which is happening in real time. It is something to see and we can laugh, but we had better pay attention, all the same. Nothing is inevitable – we have to act. Do not let these people hold power, ever again.
It is a deliberate weaponized miasma designed to destroy, in this case, the Turley blog, in a wider sense, the United States of America.
It is of the enemy, and the enemy must be defeated.
“A good plan, ——— ——– now, is better than a perfect plan next week.”
“My flanks are something for the enemy to worry about, not me. Before he finds out where my flanks are, I’ll be ——- the ——— ——.”
“I have the utmost confidence that through your efforts we will eventually —- the —- out of those ——– — You name them; I’ll —– them!”
– General George S. Patton
WordPress Censored words above:
——— ——–
——- ——— ——
—- —- ——– —–
Wow! That’s a lot of WordPress Censored words!
Kinda loses its meaning and effect, huh?
Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech.
Were the Salish fishermen?
This prof was a lone wolf? John Locke and the labor theory works. What about domiciled, residents of a place, not just passing through? 14th as so incredibly misread. 😏
I must confess I’ve never hated anything in my life. That’s all changed now. My soul is corrupted now.
OT: What was Lindsay Clancy’s motive and what is the reason that motive skipped her husband?
Back on topic, the native American stolen land meme is necessary and extends to jews stealing Arab land and the US stealing Mexican land. It’s all part of the sausage. I’ve forgotten to mention the UK stealing India oh and taking part in the jew theft thing.
🤮.
Is that you, Adolph Hitler, back from the dead? Go away.
Israel is the ancestral homeland of the Jews, going back thousands of years. No knowledgeable person disputes that. You are not knowledgeable. Your hateful remarks are based on rank ignorance. Go back to hell, Mr. Hitler, where you belong.
#WeAreEstovir
Homeland of Amalek and various Canaanite tribes that the Hebrews exterminated?
If they’re exterminated, none presently exist. That being the case, all who exist are entitled to get some land back. Problem solved.
Where do you think the Israelites came from? Out of thin air? Are you a moron? They were likely a subgroup of the Canaanite tribes. You say they exterminated the Amalekites. Your existence shows they didn’t.
The Palestinians are the descendants of the Jews and have a greater claim than the Zionists who f’d off to Europe before returning with guns to kill people for their land.
“OT: What was Lindsay Clancy’s motive and what is the reason that motive skipped her husband?”
She was given a massive collection of psychoactive drugs to deal with depression and it made her temporarily psychotic.
Her husband was not depressed and was not given the same collection of brain poisons. Instead he watched her struggle, shrugged his shoulders and left her to deal with the children and her depression on her own.
What impressed me was that, for the sake of a 1 minute statement, the University of Washington went all out to retaliate against this Computer Science professor. The land acknowledgement has absolutely nothing to do with Computer Science. This reveals the religious fervor and dictatorial will of the proponents of this statement. Also note that the university land acknowledge statement deceptively does not explicitly say the land was stolen but that is clearly the implication.
But both the Professor and the university are wrong but for different reasons. The labor theory of value for land makes absolutely no sense. (If I own land over a seam of gold or with a stand of forest or with a unique view, that land has market value even without labor.)
It is also should be noted that the US long claimed sovereignty of the land but acknowledged and recognized that the Indians had property rights.
Fortunately for the US, the Washington territory governor Isaac Stevens had energy, practical common sense, and a drive to prevent needless conflict between the Indians and the settlers. Gov Stevens, by treaty signed with at least 22 tribes (to address any competing and overlapping claims) purchased outright a large tract of land west of the Cascades and south from the Canadian border to about midway down the territory in the 1855 Treaty of Point Elliot. He did likewise with other treaties for the rest of the territory. Through fishing rights, we are still paying our dues to the Indians for the land. Also of note, the governor required the Indians to emancipate their slaves – a full 10 years before the 13th amendment was ratified.
The university, an organization in the teaching business, really missed a great teaching moment here. The true story of the acquisition of Washington state land, over 170 years ago, is far more interesting and inspiring than their sappy, vacuous land acknowledgement.
“The labor theory of value for land makes absolutely no sense. (If I own land over a seam of gold or with a stand of forest or with a unique view, that land has market value even without labor.)”
The key phrase there is “if I own”. How did you come to own it? Did you pay money that was earned by your labor in some other activity? How did you come to find that there was a seam of gold there? Did you need to dig a hole? You certainly would not be in your hypothetical situation(s) if you had just strolled in, pitched a tent for a couple of months, shot and ate some game, and then left for another place, only asserting a claim to that land much later after someone else had invested in it and established its value.
The US, and the British colonial administrators before the revolution, clearly recognized the property rights (as distinguished from sovereignty rights) of the Indians. In Washington state the Indians had valuable fishing rights as well which were indeed preserved in the treaty. The Indians did not pay for their land in coin – they merely occupied it and fought to keep it from other tribes. The labor theory applied to land would predict that one acre of undeveloped land has the same value anywhere in the world. This is clearly not the case. Many externalities affect the value of land: unique views, landmarks, trees, fertility. weather, water, harbors, school zoning, proximity to transportation, or even right to minerals which have traces exposed on the surface or perhaps are discovered by on neighboring land but the seam is in the direction of one’s property (this happened in the various gold and silver rushes). There are lots of reasons, old and modern, that a particular plot land is valued w/o labor on that particular plot of land. Ironically, the labor put into harvesting trees or minerals will eventually reduce the value of the land – not increase it. This happened in coal mining in the Appalachians where the strip-mined land was left largely useless. As the real-estate mantra states, without even a nod to the labor theory of value, “location, location, location”.
This is not to say that labor adds no value. Just that labor is not the sole (or perhaps even the primary) input to value.
Turley is one to seek out justification to support his desired conclusion. There can be a million conflicting opinions, but he will use the thinnest sliver to support an argument in his favor.
The very wealthy perform no labor. They use the leverage of their wealth to enforce their will via the police state. This is how the majority of land wealth was accumulated.
Most gold was originally discovered by looking in a stream and seeing flecks of gold. Not labor, observation. Similarly oil was discovered by natural seeps.
Bottom line, Professor Reges’ First Amendment right to Free Speech had been violated. I believe we must keep our Freedoms, as stated in the Constitution and Bill of Rights, front and center and teach them to our children and grandchildren. These fundamental principles are NOT being taught in public schools. This is the point.
God’s Girl, I agree on the violation, and I would add one thing to 2nd part. Teaching the text is not the same thing as forming the habits. They could score perfectly on the Bill of Rights and still sign up for the shadow class. Those 170 students weren’t ignorant of the First Amendment. Of course they’d heard of it. They just didn’t think it applied to the professor and a syllabus line that bothered them. The faculty staying silent while it happened taught them more than a semester of civics education. Of course teach the texts, but demonstrate how to live the principles.
You have no idea what the students thought or whether anything bothered them.
The principles of civics are to be taught by parents, not schools.
“[A] limited Constitution…can be preserved in practice no other way than through the medium of courts of justice, whose duty it must be to declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void. Without this, all the reservations of particular rights or privileges would amount to nothing…To deny this would be to affirm…that men acting by virtue of powers may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid.”
– Alexander Hamilton
_________________________
“…courts…must…declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void.”
“…men…do…what their powers do not authorize, [and] what [their powers] forbid.”
The singular American failure is the judicial branch, with emphasis on the Supreme Court.
The SCOTUS has illicitly and corruptly “interpreted” (i.e. amended) everything from “shall not be infringed” and “abridging the freedom of speech” to “nor be deprived of…property,” and most of Article 1, Section 8, out of existence when the letter and spirit of the law is that they be utterly absolute invariably, leaving the decisions on all things to free people in the free private sector.
Public schools are to produce obedient workers. This is the conservative ideal, to be minions to the oligarchs.
Professor Turley,
I agree this is a concerning trend, but unless you intend to fuel the “Age of Rage,” you should not cherrypick examples that exist on one side of the political aisle. Texas A&M’s actions against Professor McCoul’s syllabus are just as troubling, yet this story never made it to your blog.
And in fact, in August 2026, the AAUP filed a federal lawsuit against TAMU, arguing that restricting syllabus content and utilizing online reporting mechanisms acts as a “prior restraint” that severely chills academic freedom. For a more a more measured approach that elevates the First Amendment and academic freedom over politics, you could have used that as a prime opportunity to show how it is problem regardless of political affiliation.
Yet, you decided instead to put politics over everything else.
Why don’t you wait until an Answer is filed so you can even see or contemplate what you are up against. Turley is obviously smarter than you.
Anonymous – you overstate the case. Americans are inundated day after day with stories from the MSM highlighting anything they see as objectionable on the right. There are a few isolated media outlets providing balance by highlighting the foibles of the left, and this is one of them. Professor Turley is not fueling the age of rage through providing balance. What fuels the age of rage is the outrageous actions that get reported on, such as the actions discussed in the above article.
#WeAreEstovir
“There are a few isolated media outlets providing balance by highlighting the foibles of the left, and this is one of them.”
Prof. Turley’s columns do not even do that very aggressively. He selectively castigates only the very worst behavior of the left, unfortunately that standard still leaves him with plenty to write about. For comparison, I read Just the News, ZeroHedge, and Brownstone Institute pages daily; those sites go after quite a bit of what Turley ignores or lacks time to pursue.
Billionaires pay millionaires to convince the middle and lower class to be minions to the oligarchs.
Turley’s bread and butter is that effort.
He could have raised the contrast in the two situations and the parallels, but he’s not getting an invite to Fox News if he does.
Let’s think about this for a minute.
It is a HUGE problem to simply acknowledge that the Salish people may have a claim to their ancestral lands. This, after they were forcibly removed and marginalized by European settlers. Nothing more than a simple acknowledgement of POSSIBLE claims.
However there is NO problem when the Jewish people not only claim ancestral lands, but violently seize the lands and marginalize those who were living there.
^^^^ see what I mean?
The Zionists have a book written by ancient Jews claiming God told them they are the Chosen people and have rights to whatever land it is they care to occupy.
The Salish people did not have the foresight to do the same.
Wonder what would have been the reaction if “land acknowledgment” was demanded of the professors about Jews being in the middle east lands long before Islam was conceived – evidence is clear on that.
The Muslims in the area currently designated Israel are descendants of the Jews; they have more continuity on the land than do the European and Russian Jews who flocked to the area after WWII.
Regardless of how one believes the statement or not is not the point. The point is the retaliation against a person not inline with the official policy. I personally see this as nothing more than virtue signaling. I wonder what would happen if a descendant of the tribe demand their land back. Would the very same people involved give up their private residences or turn over University property? I wonder if the Professor was in trouble for not going along or for mocking the official stance and claiming the emperor has no clothes on? Today is a good day for free speech and holding one accountable for their speech. I found it odd that the professor was held liable by the University for his speech, but they are not happy they were held liable for their speech.
The lesson is not sinking in yet, but the wins are starting to pile up as is the cost. I personally believe that this dam will break and professors that have held their opinions will once again speak out. Disagreement is a good thing to behold because it is the sign of a healthy democracy.
Yes – we need a return to a time when professors felt empowered to tell the Black students to go back to picking cotton and that the women should get married, get pregnant, and get out of the university and let the men do the real work.
It is all about total control. “Magda’s” claim is stupid at best, but if you can inject stupidity into others, you win the war of minds.