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Professor hopes victory will ‘help reverse a decade-long trend towards ideological conformity in academia’
A University of Washington professor who was disciplined for adding a parody “land acknowledgement” to his syllabus won a $600,000 settlement Thursday in a lawsuit against his employer.
The settlement comes four years after Professor Stuart Reges first filed his free speech case against the public university, represented by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.
In a statement Thursday, the computer science professor expressed hope that his legal victory “will remind public universities that they are obligated to respect the First Amendment rights of their students, faculty, and staff.”
“More importantly, I hope that my protest can help reverse a decade-long trend towards ideological conformity in academia and help to convince them that instead of ‘protecting’ students from controversial ideas, they should be helping them to learn how to cope with disagreement,” Reges stated.
Reges and the University of Washington reached the final settlement after the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in December that administrators were “liable under the First Amendment for retaliation and viewpoint discrimination.”
Along with the payout, the settlement also “stipulates that the university cannot take any further action against Reges,” FIRE stated in a news release.
The situation started in December 2021 when Reges criticized the university for recommending that professors include “land acknowledgement” statements on class syllabi in a faculty email, The College Fix previously reported.
Then, in January 2022, he added a parody “land acknowledgement” to his own course syllabi: “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.”
Following student backlash, administrators took action against the professor, The Fix reported previously:
Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering administrators had the acknowledgement removed from Reges’ syllabus (without his consent), and opened up another section of the course with a different instructor.
Allen School Director Magdalena Balazinska said the school’s classes needed to be “inclusive environments,” and that Reges’ land acknowledgement was “inappropriate, offensive” and “dehumanizes and demeans Indigenous people.”
Additionally, administrators investigated Reges based on claims he may have violated the university’s “antiharassment” policy. The university later rescinded the policy, which FIRE says was “used to punish the professor for his speech.”
FIRE attorney Gabe Walters stated in a news release Thursday that free speech is the issue at the heart of the case, not the merit of land acknowledgements.
“Today’s settlement vindicates Reges’s right to express his own opinion rather than towing the university’s line,” Walters stated. “UW learned the hard way: Ignoring the First Amendment can be costly. The livelihoods of professors shouldn’t be at the mercy of student or administrator outrage, and this ruling will help protect other professors across the country.”
MORE: U. Washington professor disciplined for parody land acknowledgement wins free speech case
