Instead, New College professors make land acknowledgements official policy
A recent proposal to end land acknowledgments at faculty business meetings for Arizona State University’s New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Science was rejected before reaching the floor.
Instead, professors approved a resolution to make a Native American land acknowledgement official policy and continue to read it before every faculty meeting.
“My motion to keep meetings non-political and no longer have a required land acknowledgement read at the beginning of every meeting failed. And this is important: they voted to not even vote on it,” Professor Owen Anderson told The College Fix.
Each faculty meeting begins with a statement acknowledging the campus “sits on Native American land,” he said in an interview, adding he believes this conflicts with university bylaws that prohibit using faculty meeting time for political purposes.
“They did not even want to allow it to come to a vote,” he said, describing the decision as censorship. “Faculty meetings should remain about faculty business.”
In a copy of his proposal shared with The Fix, Anderson argued faculty meetings should remain focused on their “academic and administrative purpose,” adding that such acknowledgments undermine institutional neutrality and “privilege one political framework.”
“If the acknowledgment is non-political and merely a neutral expression, then there is no reason to limit the time to one type of statement,” Anderson wrote. “Other faculty should be equally free to offer alternative acknowledgments or expressions.”
Anderson, a well-known outspoken Christian conservative professor on campus, said he first raised concerns with the faculty meeting chair, who declined to make changes, and later with the college dean, who also rejected the request.
He then introduced a formal motion at the meeting March 31, but his peers ultimately voted not to bring it to the floor, he said.
In his argument to colleagues, Anderson had pointed out: “If the acknowledgment is non-political and merely a neutral expression, then there is no reason to limit the time to one type of statement. Other faculty should be equally free to offer alternative acknowledgments or expressions.”
And in fact, The College Fix previously reported on Anderson’s proposal to expand ASU’s land acknowledgment to include “settler-capitalist” contributions last November.
“We acknowledge the generations of settlers, farmers, builders, capitalists, and families who transformed the Salt River Valley into a place where a great modern city and a world-class university could thrive. Their labor in cultivating the land, establishing communities, developing infrastructure, investing in growth, and building the civic and religious institutions of Phoenix created the foundations that allow us to be here today,” that proposal had stated.
Anderson, in his recent interview with The Fix, criticized broader political trends in higher education.
“Our universities continue to be highly politicized by left-leaning professors,” he said, adding that while terminology like DEI might have changed during the Trump administration, universities continue to promote the same progressive ideology.
He said land acknowledgment readings are largely symbolic.
“Ultimately, these readings do nothing,” Anderson said, calling them a form of “virtue signaling.”
“If you really believe this, your house is on this land as well,” he said. “You could sell your house and give it to the local tribes you are talking about.”
The decision to formalize the land acknowledgment as official policy for the New College was based on the argument that adopting the acknowledgment would support the university’s mission to expand access and opportunity, particularly for Native American communities who have historically been denied access to higher education.
Anderson criticized this rationale, emphasizing it implies land acknowledgements are political in nature.
Arizona State University’s media relations division did not respond to The College Fix’s request for comment.
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