Stuart Reges #

Introduction #

Stuart Reges is a teaching professor of computer science at the University of Washington’s Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, where he has taught since 2004, and the plaintiff in one of the country’s most closely watched campus free-speech cases. In December 2021, Reges criticized land-acknowledgment statements in an email to faculty; the following month, he included a parody land acknowledgment — invoking philosopher John Locke’s labor theory of property — in his own course syllabus. The University of Washington responded by censoring the statement from his syllabus without his consent, opening a yearlong disciplinary investigation under an anti-harassment policy, and creating a competing “shadow” section of his course so students could opt out of taking it. Reges sued in 2022 with backing from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE); after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled in his favor in December 2025, UW agreed in September 2026 to pay $600,000 to settle the case.

Background Information #

Land-acknowledgment statements — formal recognitions of Indigenous ties to the land an institution occupies — are common at universities and public schools. In January 2022, the Allen School recommended that faculty include a statement acknowledging Coast Salish Indigenous lands in their syllabi. Reges, a teaching professor who had been at the school since 2004, opposed the policy. Instead of the model statement, his syllabus claimed 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” — a nod to Locke’s philosophical theory that property rights are established by labor, which Reges said was intended to demonstrate that competing views exist on the value of land acknowledgments.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation #

The parody drew student backlash, and administrators moved against Reges. Allen School leadership had the acknowledgment removed from his syllabus without his consent and opened a separate section of the course with a different instructor. Allen School Director Magdalena Balazinska said the school’s classes needed to be “inclusive environments” and called Reges’ land acknowledgment “inappropriate, offensive” and something that “dehumanizes and demeans Indigenous people.” The university then opened a yearlong disciplinary investigation into whether Reges had violated Executive Order 31, an anti-harassment policy Reges described as one under which “you aren’t allowed to say things that are considered inappropriate” and that was “really vague about what’s inappropriate.” Officials also apologized to his students for his offensive behavior and, in Reges’ telling, offered them “three ways to report professor Reges if he does anything else to offend you.” Although the university ultimately declined to formally discipline Reges, officials warned him that repeating the statement could trigger further punishment — and, by his account, withheld a pay raise for roughly a year.

Public Reaction and Consequences #

Reges cast his protest as a stand against orthodoxy. “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,” he told KOMO News. In 2022 he sued the university, naming then-UW President Ana Mari Cauce, Allen School Director Magdalena Balazinska, Vice Director Dan Grossman, and College of Engineering Dean Nancy Allbritton as defendants. A U.S. district court initially sided with the university, but in December 2025 a three-judge Ninth Circuit panel reversed, ruling that student discomfort cannot justify retaliating against a professor’s speech on matters of public concern and that administrators were liable “under the First Amendment for retaliation and viewpoint discrimination.” The panel’s decision established that teaching materials like course syllabi are protected academic speech, setting binding First Amendment precedent for public higher-education institutions across the Western U.S. In a sign of the stakes for the university side, Washington State University filed a brief supporting UW’s position, joined by Western, Central, and Eastern Washington universities.

Current Status #

The case ended in September 2026, when FIRE announced that UW had agreed to pay $600,000 to the organization to cover damages, legal fees, and costs — a payout, KOMO News noted, that taxpayers are footing. The settlement prohibits the university from taking further adverse action against Reges or removing the parody statement from his syllabi in perpetuity, leaving him free to include the Locke statement in future course materials without administrative interference. Current UW President Robert J. Jones is named in the final agreement. The university said it “maintains that we acted appropriately, and this settlement is in no way an admission of any wrongdoing,” calling a settlement the most reasonable option given the attorney fees and costs the Ninth Circuit’s 2-1 decision exposed it to. While the appeal was pending, UW also rescinded and replaced Executive Order 31 — the policy FIRE said was “used to punish the professor for his speech” — though the university maintains the revision was unrelated to the case.

Impact on Their Career/Life #

Reges remains an active faculty member and taught throughout the four-year legal fight, his status with UW unchanged. “I am deeply grateful to FIRE for this legal victory which will remind public universities that they are obligated to respect the First Amendment rights of their students, faculty, and staff,” he said in a statement, adding that he hopes his protest can “help reverse a decade-long trend towards ideological conformity in academia.” FIRE attorney Gabe Walters said the settlement “vindicates Reges’s right to express his own opinion rather than towing the university’s line,” and that “the livelihoods of professors shouldn’t be at the mercy of student or administrator outrage,” predicting the ruling would help protect other professors across the country. For the University of Washington, the episode ended with a six-figure payout and a binding precedent against it — a costly lesson, as Walters put it: “UW learned the hard way: Ignoring the First Amendment can be costly.”