He Made a Joke About Land Acknowledgements. Then the Trouble Began.
Reges is an now a professor of computer science at the University of Washington s Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering. At the beginning of the Fall 2020 semester, the UW published a best practices document encouraging faculty to include an Indigenous Land Acknowledgment Statement on their syllabi. The statement, which has been more prevalent in left-leaning institutions in recent years, is meant to acknowledge the historic presence of indigenous people on the land where the university sits.
Professor Reges doesn t think highly of these statements. Land acknowledgments are performative acts of conformity that should be resisted, he said.
So last school year, instead of reprinting the university-approved language 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 Suqaumish, Tulalip and Muckleshoot nations Reges constructed his own disclaimer. He wrote: 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. This appeared on his syllabus for a computer programming course he was teaching.
I’m glad no one has asked us to put a “land acknowledgment” in our syllabi. They are just too stupid and act as loyalty oaths to the Woke Nonsense. The worst thing about them is that they set a bad example for our students. Either they think their professors are idiots or cowards, or they think there must be something to the land acknowledgment, which is, frankly unlikely. But, as I said, so far no land acknowledgments for us.