UW professor wins $600,000 settlement following free speech lawsuit
SEATTLE — The University of Washington and a longtime computer science professor reached a major settlement over a controversial syllabus, putting an end to a years-long free speech lawsuit involving Professor Stuart Reges' take on UW's land acknowledgement statement.
This all started when UW allegedly punished Reges for doing a parody of a university-approved land acknowledgment in his syllabus in 2022.
Reges filed a lawsuit and now taxpayers are footing a $600,000 payout for damages and legal fees.
It is common at universities and public schools to include land acknowledgement statements that recognize Indigenous ties to the land. As an example, Seattle Public Schools Chief of Staff Bev Redmond said the following at the beginning of a press conference on the first day of school Wednesday: "We would like to acknowledge that we are on the ancestral lands and traditional territories of the Puget Sound Cosalish people."
In his lawsuit, Reges stated in December 2021, he criticized land acknowledgment statements in an email to faculty. Then, in early 2022, he parodied UW’s model statement in his syllabus. It 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.”
He claims it was a nod to John Locke’s philosophical theory that property rights are established by labor, and he tried demonstrating there are competing views on the value of land acknowledgments.
"I’ve been pushing back against what I see as a growing orthodoxy at the University of Washington that you’re supposed to believe certain things, and you’re not allowed to express ideas that are outside that set of ideas," Reges told KOMO News. "They apologized to my students for my offensive behavior. They said, ‘Here’s three ways to report professor Reges if he does anything else to offend you.’ And they withheld a pay raise from me for like a year."
"Any response to people who were offended by what you did?" KOMO's Jackie Kent asked.
"As adults, we all need to live in a world where we’re not going to agree with everybody else. You know, we have to learn how to have a constructive dialogue with people," Reges responded. "You have to understand the requirements of the First Amendment. We had something called Executive Order 31 that you aren’t allowed to say things that are considered inappropriate. And, it was really vague about what’s inappropriate, and so that was part of what we had in our lawsuit."
Washington State University filed a brief in support of UW's position, and it was also backed by Western, Central and Eastern Washington universities. It states, "Now is not the time to make it harder for the circuit’s public colleges and universities to ensure safe learning environments."
A federal appeals court in May determined the university violated Reges’ First Amendment rights by taking "adverse action against [Reges] based on his view on a matter of public concern."
UW Spokesperson Victor Balta in a statement wrote, in summary, the university maintains that it acted properly, and that a settlement agreement was the most reasonable option due to attorney fees and costs.
He added there have been changes to UW's anti-harassment policy mentioned in the lawsuit, but they were not related to or because of this case.
"Prof. Reges has retained his faculty position and continued teaching throughout this process, and his status with the UW remains unchanged," Balta wrote. "To be clear: The decision to rescind [the policy] was not related to this case. The policy revision process had been underway as part of the creation of theCivil Rights Compliance Office, one of the action items in response to theresolution agreement with the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights to resolve Title VI complaints and the UW Antisemitism and Islamophobia Task Forces."