Professor Stuart Reges has returned to Quillette to reflect on his ordeal at the hands of the University of Washington after he authored a satirical “land acknowledgement” for a course syllabus – a small act of intellectual resistance to institutionally imposed political expression that triggered a formal disciplinary process, and, ultimately, a significant First Amendment ruling.
Last December, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit delivered a decisive victory for the free-speech rights of public university faculty in Reges v. Cauce. Reversing a federal district court ruling, the appellate court held that university administrators violated the First Amendment when they investigated, reprimanded, and threatened to discipline Reges for substituting his own satirical take on the university’s preferred land-acknowledgement text.
The story begins in 2015, when the University adopted an official statement acknowledging “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”. Its own guidance frames this as something to be “spoken by UW leadership” during events “to acknowledge that our campus sits on occupied land”.
In 2019, the University’s School of Computer Science and Engineering began recommending that instructors include an “Indigenous Land Acknowledgement” in their syllabi. The university’s model text was offered as an “idea”, not a “prescription” – though, as CAF knows from its own casework, the line between the two can be vanishingly thin where peer-group pressure, the fear of professional ostracism, and what Nassim Nicholas Taleb calls the “dictatorship of the small minority” do so much of the coercive work.
The problem, as Reges explains in Quillette, is that such acknowledgements are not neutral at all, but a form of political speech, advancing the idea that some debt is owed to Indigenous groups, and that contemporary institutional life is shadowed by moral illegitimacy. The word “occupied”, in particular, “suggests that the presence of UW, its staff, and its students in this part of the world is morally illegitimate”.
Two years later, after a colleague circulated a critical article to faculty lists, Reges replied-all saying he had “been thinking a lot about land acknowledgments” and was considering including his own version the following quarter. On 3 January 2022, he did just that. Students opening the syllabus for his required introductory programming course were confronted with the following parody land acknowledgement: “I acknowledge that by the labour theory of property the Coast Salish people can claim historical ownership of almost none of the land currently occupied by the University of Washington.”
Why that formulation? In Two Treatises of Government, John Locke’s labour theory of property suggests that when one’s labour is mixed with common land, it can be made one’s own: people own the products of their work, and the land is no longer simply held in common. On Reges’s reading, because the University of Washington’s main campus was carved out of dense forest, it wouldn’t be claimable on Lockean terms. His broader point was that land acknowledgements aren’t some kind of naïve do-goodery, but function as institutionally sponsored political expression – a claim nicely demonstrated by the fact that once you change the intellectual frame, the moral conclusion changes with it.
A light moment of intellectual persiflage, you might say. Erudite badinage. Boffin banter. The sort of thing that should bring a wry smile to the lips of scholars of all political persuasions once they decode its intellectual scaffolding. And yet the university’s administrators weren’t amused. On 4 January 2022, Allen School director Magdalena Balazinska asked Reges to remove the statement, calling it “offensive” and saying it created a “toxic environment”. When he refused, administrators replaced the online syllabus with a version omitting it, and the school publicly condemned the wording. Balazinska then emailed students to apologise and pointed them to reporting options. The university even opened a second section of the same course, enabling students to switch.
In July 2022, with a faculty disciplinary process already underway, Reges took legal action against senior university administrators. The internal process, which was initiated earlier in the year and carried on while his lawsuit was pending, ultimately culminated in a June 2023 letter warning him that his statement likely violated the university’s Executive Order 31, while stopping short of sanctions, even as it cautioned that repeating the conduct could trigger discipline. In court, Reges, who was represented by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), argued that the university had targeted him for his viewpoint and retaliated against constitutionally protected speech. They also argued that Executive Order 31, which bars conduct “that is deemed unacceptable or inappropriate, regardless of whether the conduct rises to the level of unlawful discrimination, harassment or retaliation”, is unconstitutionally vague and overbroad.
By May 2024, U.S. District Judge John H. Chun had ruled for the defendants, accepting the university’s case that the controversy’s disruptive effects justified its response. But on appeal Reges reignited his First Amendment argument, and this time prevailed. Writing for the majority, Circuit Judge Daniel Bress stressed that vague claims of “offence” are not a trump card in higher education: “Debate and disagreement are hallmarks of higher education. Student discomfort with a professor’s views can prompt discussion and disapproval. But this discomfort is not grounds for the university retaliating against the professor. We hold that the university’s actions toward the professor violated his First Amendment rights.”
Reacting to the ruling, FIRE attorney Gabe Walters described it as “a resounding victory for Professor Stuart Reges and the First Amendment rights of public university faculty,” adding: “The Ninth Circuit agreed with what FIRE has said from the beginning: Universities can’t force professors to parrot an institution’s preferred political views under pain of punishment.”
The court directed summary judgment for Reges on retaliation and viewpoint discrimination, and sent his challenge to Executive Order 31 back to the district court for further proceedings.
The full decision is available here. Professor Reges’s Quillette account is here.
This article forms part of the Committee for Academic Freedom’s monitoring of developments in UK higher education. To receive monthly updates and analysis on cases affecting academic freedom, click the link and subscribe to our newsletter.