A university professor who was punished for his satire on his school’s politicized “land acknowledgement” statement has won a $600,000 settlement from officials whose political agenda triggered him.
According to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Education, the payout is going from the University of Washington to Professor Stuart Reges.
He parodied a university-approved claim about historical ownership of land in the Pacific Northwest.
Those politically correct statements have become common in America’s higher education industry, and often cite the claims to land by native American tribal officials, claims often clouded by the facts of history itself.
VICTORY! After a FIRE lawsuit, the University of Washington paid $600,000 after punishing Professor Stuart Reges for parodying a university-approved “land acknowledgment” in his syllabus. 🧵 https://t.co/unrBuf5yNU pic.twitter.com/0q63E9Nfx5
— FIRE (@TheFIREorg) September 3, 2026
FIRE reported the payout comes after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held administrators liable under the First Amendment for retaliation and viewpoint discrimination in the case.
The fight erupted in 2022 when FIRE sued on behalf of Reges, and besides the monetary compensation, the agreement bars the university of any further action against Reges.
Reges said, “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. Only then can we heal the deep divisions that confront us today.”
The University of Washington will pay $600K to Computer Science professor Stuart Reges after removing his parody land acknowledgment statement from his syllabus pic.twitter.com/OOJkYFe9uZ
— Neetu Arnold (@neetu_arnold) September 4, 2026
FIRE noted that it’s now common in academia “to encourage statements that formally recognize indigenous ties to the land. In December 2021, Reges criticized land acknowledgment statements in an email to faculty, and the next month he parodied UW’s model statement in his syllabus.”
“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,” he wrote.
He had rejected the university’s politically correct and possibly highly inaccurate claims.
University officials immediately censored him and created a “competing” class so students could choose not to take their computer lessons from Reges.
He also was “investigated.”
The Ninth Circuit then held officials liable for violating the First Amendment and told the lower court to deliver a verdict for Reges on his retaliation and viewpoint discrimination claims.
“Reasonable people can disagree about the value of land acknowledgments,” said FIRE attorney Gabe Walters. “What’s not up for debate is academic freedom. Today’s settlement vindicates Reges’s right to express his own opinion rather than toeing the university’s line. 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.”
Years ago, I wrote about the abusive treatment of University of Washington Prof. Stuart Reges over his mocking of the school’s land acknowledgments. https://t.co/hxGowwjLoV After burning money in fees and costs, the university has now settled the case for $600,000.…
— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) September 3, 2026
Constitutional expert Jonathan Turley pointed out those “acknowledgements” appeared even at a recent Michigan Democrat event and the opening of Barack Obama’s monolith library in Chicago.
“Critics argue it is the ultimate virtue signaling and is increasingly being forced on both speakers and audiences,” he said.
Defendants in the case 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.
The school had imposed its ideology which said, “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.”
The labor theory to which Reges referred, from John Locke, explains property is “a divine gift of God that began in the state of nature, where all was created in common by God.”
