Against Land Acknowledgements. By Stuart Reges.

These are sombre declarations intended to acknowledge that land now used for some event or purpose was once inhabited by indigenous tribes (some acknowledgements add that the land was unjustly taken). …

This convention has been common practice in Australia, New Zealand, and Canada for some time, but has only begun to make an appearance in the US in the last few years. …

At first, I just ignored these performative displays — they are faintly annoying and serve no practical purpose, but they struck me as basically harmless. As their appearances become more persistent, however, I began to worry that they represent affirmation of a specific ideology. …

When I point this out to other faculty, they usually just shrug and say, “Well, I’m not a fan of land acknowledgements, but it’s not a big deal.” This kind of passive acceptance leads to what Nassim Nicholas Taleb calls the “dictatorship of the small minority.” A small but vocal minority cares deeply about an issue, but because others don’t care much either way, the vocal minority ends up imposing its will on everyone else. The more I thought about this, the more it bothered me. …

So he did something about it at his university, which is in Seattle:

In December, I sent a message to our faculty mailing list announcing that I planned to append my own version of the land acknowledgement to the syllabus for my winter course. I included the text I had in mind and made it clear that I wanted feedback because I wasn’t sure it was a good idea. Nobody responded. So, when classes started this week, I posted my syllabus with the following declaration under the heading “Indigenous Land Acknowledgment”:

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 [UW].

I am a Georgist, and according to the Georgist worldview, Native Americans have no special claim to any land, just like the rest of us. …

To the Georgist idea that land is owned in common by all living people, [John] Locke added that by mixing one’s labor with the land, one encloses it from the shared property because people own the products of their labor. If, for example, you make the effort to grow corn on an acre of land, you come to own that acre of land, so long as there is still plenty of land left for others to use.

One can certainly object that the labor theory of property is not applicable here. Scholars disagree about how it may or may not apply to Native Americans. But I have been unable to find much evidence that Native Americans ever made productive use of the 350 acres on which the main campus of the University of Washington now stands. The university archives have a picture of the land in its “wild state,” which had to be cleared of trees — an extremely tedious job — and graded to make it suitable for the construction of buildings. As far as I can tell, it was a dense forest during the years that Native Americans were the primary inhabitants of this region. …

The ruling class goes into action:

The Director of the Allen School contacted me and asked me to remove the land acknowledgment at once. I refused. There followed a negotiation during which I argued that faculty should be treated consistently. …

I told the Director that the UW statement is political, and that if others were going to be allowed to make this statement, then I should be allowed to make my own.

First, the Director had the IT staff remove my syllabus from the university’s website and replace it with a statement that read: “Note: The course syllabus has been temporarily removed due to offensive statements. We apologize for the inconvenience.” A day later, the syllabus was replaced with a version that redacted the land acknowledgment. The Director also emailed my students with a message that began:

Yesterday, it was brought to my attention that the CSE143 syllabus contained an offensive statement under the heading of ‘Indigenous Land Acknowledgment’. I apologize for that. It is extremely important to me and other faculty in the Allen School that CSE 143, and all our classes, be inclusive environments.

As has become usual in the DEI context, that word “inclusive” sounds tolerant even as it is used to enforce conformity. The Director went on to provide three different options for students who wished to file complaints about me. The following day, she informed my students that a new section of the course taught by a different instructor would be made available, and that any students who wanted to switch could do so.

Why does it matter so to the PC mob?

I have been asked by colleagues and friends why I am making such a big deal out of something so trivial. Some of them have concluded that my intransigence is just a stunt and that I’ve been needlessly rude for good measure. But I can ask the same question in reverse. Why is this such a big deal to my critics?

The first official message about all this was copied to two deans and a vice provost, so this has obviously been discussed at a high level within the university. I was told that my land acknowledgment is offensive even though I didn’t insult anyone. I was told that it created a “toxic environment” in my class and the university Twitter account declared itself “horrified.” Toxic? Horrified? Really? And now students are being offered the option of a different instructor. So, who is making a big deal out of this? …

What would happen if everyone took the time to write what they actually believe about land ownership and historical moral responsibility, instead of simply repeating a mantra they have been handed by a DEI bureaucrat? A plethora of opinions would inevitably emerge and the absurdity of these rote declarations would immediately become apparent.

But that is probably a forlorn hope. The university administration’s ballistic response has put everyone else on notice — make trouble for us and we will make plenty of trouble for you. They know as well as Nassim Nicholas Taleb does that the desire for a quiet life is what allows dictatorships of small minorities to prevail.

Only conformists survive in modern institutions, bullied into submission.

One man is easily crushed, like a single tall poppy. But if everyone did it at once…