Geoffrey R. Stone

In March 2019, Stone drew criticism from some students for his long-standing use of the word nigger in his classroom discussions of the fighting words doctrine, a limitation of the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech.

On March 7, 2019, Stone announced that he no longer intended to use the word in class. Stone remarked, "My conversation with the African-American students convinced me that the hurt and distraction caused by use of the word in the story are real and to be taken seriously. As a teacher, my goal is to be effective and I decided that use of the word in that story isn’t sufficiently important to justify the hurt and distraction it causes. For me, this is a great example of why free speech is important. It enables us to learn from each other."

Stone's other books include Sex and the Constitution: Sex, Religion, and Law from America's Origins to the Twenty-First Century (2017), Top Secret: When Our Government Keeps Us in the Dark (2007), War and Liberty: An American Dilemma (2007), and Democracy and Equality: The Enduring Constitutional Vision of the Warren Court (2019) (with fellow Chicago professor David A. Strauss).

Stone has been a law professor at Chicago since 1973. He served as dean of the Law School from 1987 to 1994, and as provost of the University of Chicago from 1994 to 2002. He also served as Interim Dean of the Law School from July 1, 2015 to November 1, 2015 while the School searched for a replacement for Michael H. Schill.

Stone completed a B.S. degree in 1968 at the University of Pennsylvania, and a J.D. degree in 1971 at the University of Chicago Law School, where he was editor-in-chief of the University of Chicago Law Review. He clerked for Judge J. Skelly Wright of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in 1971–72, and then for Justice William J. Brennan Jr. of the Supreme Court of the United States in 1972–73.

Geoffrey R. Stone (born 1946) is an American law professor and noted First Amendment scholar. He is currently the Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School.

Stone’s book, Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime from the Sedition Act of 1798 to the War on Terrorism (2004) received the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights Award for the Human Rights Book of the Year, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize as the Best Book in History, the American Political Science Association’s Kammerer Award for the Best Book of the Year in Political Science, the Goldsmith Award from the Kennedy School of Harvard University for the Best Book of the Year in Public Affairs, and the Scribes Award for the Best Book of the Year in Law.