Stuart Reges, a computer science instructor at the University of Washington, posted a parody "land acknowledgment" in his course syllabi. 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." The university investigated him for a year, withheld his merit pay increase, then created a competing section of his course — and a third of those students transferred back out of it into his class.
The University of Washington just wrote him a check for $600,000.
That's the settlement Reges won after four years of litigation that went all the way to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled 2-1 for First Amendment retaliation and viewpoint discrimination. As part of the deal, Reges gets to keep posting his parody land acknowledgment "in perpetuity," with no administrative interference, and the university is barred from creating competing course sections to punish him. The school, for its part, "maintains that we acted appropriately" — which is an interesting thing to say while handing someone six hundred grand.
Reges isn't the only one. Over in California, Daymon Johnson, a history professor at Kern Community College District, just won a $150,000 attorney's fees settlement and a permanent injunction after a three-year legal battle. Johnson's crime was criticizing "cultural Marxism" and pushing back against mandatory DEIA training. He described being mandated "to value and promote DEI with its neo-Marxist understanding of race, grievance, identity politics, and cloaked affirmative action." The college investigated him for five months.
U.S. District Judge Kirk Sheriff approved a preliminary injunction in February 2026, and by July the district settled. Under the terms, Kern Community College cannot investigate, discipline, or terminate Johnson for "proposed social or political speech" — with federal court oversight for the next five years. Johnson's colleague at Bakersfield College, history professor Matthew Garrett, had already won a $2.4 million settlement seven years earlier after the board voted secretly to fire him. The official charge: dishonesty for disagreeing with colleagues.
"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," said Gabe Walters, an attorney with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which represented Reges.
Alan Gura, Vice President for Litigation at the Institute for Free Speech, which represented Johnson, put it more bluntly: "Professor Johnson spent years fighting for the First Amendment right that every American professor should take for granted."
The pattern spans multiple universities, multiple states, and settlements totaling well over $3 million. University administrations build ideological compliance systems — land acknowledgments, DEIA mandates, cultural sensitivity trainings — then punish anyone who dissents. When the dissenter fights back in court, the administration loses. Badly. And expensively. The 9th Circuit sided with Reges. A federal judge sided with Johnson. Garrett's $2.4 million settlement was its own white flag.
Johnson himself noted something worth hearing: "I'm in a fortunate position because I'm later in my career. I can retire anytime if I had wanted to." The implication is obvious. Younger professors — the ones with mortgages and kids and decades left before tenure — see what happens to the Johnsons and the Regeses and they keep their mouths shut. That's the point. The investigation looks like the punishment. The real punishment is what it does to everybody watching.
Nine months passed between the 9th Circuit ruling and the final settlement in the Reges case. That's how long UW held out after losing on appeal — nearly a year of filing legal briefs they knew wouldn't land, presumably hoping Reges would give up. He didn't.
Reges said he hopes "my protest can help reverse a decade-long trend towards ideological conformity in academia." Whether it does depends on how many professors are willing to endure four years of litigation for the right to think out loud. For the universities running the numbers, the math is getting clearer. $600,000 here. $150,000 there. $2.4 million down the road.
At some point, the cheapest DEIA policy is the one you stop enforcing.
