Like many other Americans, Curmie is something of a mongrel
in terms of ethnicity. He’s never done a
formal genealogical study of his ancestry, but assuming he was not led astray
by parents and grandparents, his heritage includes representatives from at
least six western European countries… and one Native American tribe. His paternal grandfather would have been the
last in the line to be able to claim tribal membership, but that doesn’t mean
there isn’t something there.
As Curmie suggested,
channeling George Carlin, back on the 4th of July, it’s sort of strange to take
pride in something that is totally beyond one’s control. Curmie isn’t “proud to be an American,”
although he’s reasonably content, current government notwithstanding. Pretty much the same could be said for his
First Nations heritage: he thinks it’s kinda cool, but that’s as far as it
goes.
Of course, his status is somewhat in-between. He’s got more Native ancestry than most
folks, but to suggest that he is in any way part of that world, part of that
culture, would be silly at best. Is his
position, then, liminal? compromised? intermediary? Whatever.
Does this give Curmie a slightly different perspective on questions
regarding land acknowledgements, which have become something of a lightning rod
in both directions of late? I
dunno. Maybe? At least it gives Curmie a bit more than an
average person’s interest in the phenomenon.
There are those who would argue that these pre-event
speeches, additions to syllabi, etc., are an appropriate recognition of history. Others think they’re no more than
self-congratulatory virtue-signaling. The
issue splits more or less on ideological lines, with liberals in favor and
conservatives opposed. On this one, though,
Curmie leans rather more to the conservative view.
One particular aspect stands out in Curmie’s mind: The Man,
however embodied, always wants to tell everyone what to do. A few years ago, Curmie was (he thinks) the
only faculty director at his university not to include a land acknowledgement
at the beginning of his shows. He does
confess to taking that stand at least as much to resist conforming to liberal
dogma as for thinking the whole thing rather inane. And there was pressure: the tone of
“you don’t have to…” made it clear that the politically wise choice was rather
obvious.
A year or two ago, after Curmie had retired, at least from
production work, his university was absorbed into the gaping maw of the
University of Texas system. Word came
down from somewhere on high—the governor, the state legislature, the
politically-appointed Regents, the Higher Education Coordinating Board, the
system chancellor, the university president… somewhere—that land
acknowledgements were now banned at state universities. They’re political, you see, so we’re going to
use our political power to prevent you from using yours… or your 1st Amendment
rights.
It’s probably not very surprising that after over four
decades in the classroom, Curmie is likely to side with the professoriate
rather than the administration except in truly exceptional cases. So it is—well, mostly, at least—with the story
that prompts this essay: the case of University of Washington computer science professor
Stuart Reges (seen above), who just got a $600,000 settlement from the University of
Washington for their retaliation against him for criticizing the land
acknowledgement policy and including a parody version in his syllabus.
Ok, let’s go back to whether this all started. Back in the fall semester of 2021, UW’s Paul
G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering issued a “best practices”
document which included an “Indigenous Land Acknowledgement”: “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 document
seems to have been online back then, but the links no longer work.)
Despite what it says in an article in the
not-exactly-politically-neutral Campus Reform,
it does not appear that faculty were required to include the passage in their
syllabi. According to a letter from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE’s name before changing the latter two words of their title to “and
Expression”), however, if they mentioned the topic at all, they had to use
precisely the version approved by the administration.
Reges, who opposes DEI initiatives in general and apparently
this one in particular, didn’t follow that policy. He distributed an email opposing land
acknowledgements and included the following 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.” That, Curmie
is told, is based on John Locke’s theory of property rights. It’s been over a half century since Curmie
read any Locke, and he remembers little if any it, so he’s going to have to
accept that analysis. It doesn’t really
matter, anyway.
The university’s response was what in Curmie’s day was
called a conniption. Allen School
Director Magdalena Balazinska described Reges’s parody as “not related to
course content,” “inappropriate,” and “offensive,” and demanded that he remove
it. He refused. So the university changed his syllabus anyway,
apologized in an email to students which claimed Reges’s commentary “dehumanizes
and demeans Indigenous people,” and opened a competing section of the same
course scheduled at the same time.
OK, let’s rate those claims.
“Not related to course content”: true.
Of course, land acknowledgments of any description aren’t related to
course content in any class except perhaps for a handful of examples in history
or the social sciences… certainly not in computer science. Spewing the party line would, of course, not
have been a problem for the administration. “Inappropriate”: yeah, at least a little. “Offensive”: nope. “Dehumanizes and demeans Indigenous people”: give
me a fucking break. And don’t get Curmie
started on the sense of smug superiority that fairly drips off the page.
Exactly why Reges put the fake land acknowledgement on his
syllabus isn’t clear. Perhaps he foresaw
the opportunity to sue if he were punished for it. Maybe he just wanted his proverbial 15
minutes of fame. Or he regarded land
acknowledgments as inane, and he couldn’t stand yet another politically-inspired
edict forbidding him from being political.
Look, Reges is a conservative, opposed to anything in the
general vicinity of DEI, and land acknowledgements are in Curmie’s opinion one
of the sillier versions of that phenomenon.
It’s difficult to see how Indigenous folks would see them as anything
but a hollow promise of support, provided, of course, that no actual action
would be required. Curmie understands
Reges’s frustration, is not above a little snark himself, and does appreciate the
impulse to throw a spanner in the works.
Still, his comment about Bret Weinstein,
the Evergreen State prof who questioned a radical change to a campus tradition
a few years ago might apply here, as well: “Curmie admires his stance against
thought control, but isn’t so sure he’d want him as a colleague.” Different reasons; same conclusion.
Anyway, FIRE got into the act rather quickly. Three days after that organization wrote to
the university, Reges raised the visibility of the case by doing an interview with Campus Reform and publishing a piece there titled “REGES: Defy the nonsense of indigenous land acknowledgments.” (Curmie doesn’t know if Reges wrote the headline, although he suspects not).
A few months later FIRE sued the university on Reges’s
behalf, arguing that the investigation and punishment constituted viewpoint
discrimination and were therefore a 1st Amendment violation, and that the
policy itself was overbroad and unconstitutionally vague. Nearly two years after that, in May of 2024, the
U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington ruled in favor of
the university, citing Pickering v. Board of Education as
precedent. That’s particularly
interesting because that case was ruled in favor of the teacher involved over
the school district.
That 1968 Supreme Court ruling affirmed the rights of teachers
to comment on matters of public concern, provided only that they did not knowingly
or recklessly make false statements.
Justice Thurgood Marshall advocated a “balance between the interests of
the teacher, as a citizen, in commenting upon matters of public concern and the
interest of the State, as an employer, in promoting the efficiency of the
public services it performs through its employees.”
Reges and FIRE appealed the district court’s decision, and in
December of 2025 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit overturned the lower court’s ruling and remanded “for further proceedings.” Shortly thereafter, the university decided to
settle rather than prolong the process; the details of the agreement were
announced earlier this month.
There are a couple of things Curmie finds intriguing
here. Foremost among them is where
Curmie himself stands on the two central issues of the case. He is something of a liberal, after all, so
one might reasonably expect him to go along with the university’s land
acknowledgement policy. He does not; he
thinks that policy is both silly and authoritarian.
One might also anticipate that Curmie, after an entire
career in the classroom, would want professors to have absolute control over
their syllabi. Actually, though, this is
where things get sticky. Yes, faculty
should be able to determine what gets taught in their courses; those
decisions should never be questioned by some administrator from outside the
discipline or state legislator or whoever.
But that’s a matter of course content, which of course is what the
right-wingers want to control rather than acceding to the professional
expertise of the person in the classroom.
And it’s certainly true that Curmie has expressed disdain
for what he regarded as stupid ideas propagated by administrators, politicians
and the like. He’s even done that in
class if it was relevant to the coursework or to the efficient functioning of
the class. But when we start talking
about syllabi, we begin to head into a different territory. In Curmie’s adopted state of Texas, all
syllabi at state universities have to be posted online, accessible within three
clicks. That makes them into something
like public documents disseminated by the university. That the administration ought to have some
control over what goes out over its name doesn’t seem unreasonable.
Of course, Washington may not have a rule like that, but the
general principle still applies. Yes,
the whole land acknowledgement business is rather dumb, but Reges was in fact
being deliberately provocative with his little foray into satire, some students
were indeed disturbed, and to the extent that the university may appear to be
endorsing his commentary, there’s a problem.
Is Reges acting as an individual, or as a representative of the
school? That’s a tough one, frankly. Curmie therefore regards the court’s decision
as a net positive, but not without its downside.
The other item worth mentioning is that those often paranoid
cries from the right that some story isn’t being covered by the mainstream
press are actually pretty accurate in this case. As far as Curmie can tell, there are no
stories on the major networks or in the big-name newspapers about the
settlement. Yes, FIRE talks about it,
but there’s not even a story that Curmie can find on PEN America, who filed an amicus
brief for Reges when the case was before the Ninth Circuit. There’s a brief piece on Inside Higher Ed (it’s behind a paywall, but it’s there), but nothing in the Chronicle of
Higher Education. Yahoo did have a story, and it looks like some kind of commentary in the Washington Post about the cost of humorlessness, but it’s behind a paywall.
There are stories all over the right-wing outlets, though: Fox News, Seattle Red, Campus Reform, Minding the Campus… you get the picture. It would seem to Curmie that the general population, not just the conservative echo chamber, ought to know about this stuff. But now, at least, you know, Gentle Reader.
