A Professor Has Long Used a Racial Slur in Class to Teach Free-Speech Law. No More, He Says.

Geoffrey R. Stone says he will stop using the N-word in his free-speech class.

For years, the University of Chicago law professor has used the racial epithet during class to illustrate the “fighting words” doctrine, which refers to the use of language that could incite violence.

This week, an essay in The Chicago Maroon with the headline “Racism Thrives at the Law School” criticized Stone for doing so. The author of the article, David Raban, a student in the class, argued that by using the word in a January lecture, Stone had “signaled to white students that saying the N-word is acceptable” and had “created a safe space for racism and a hostile environment for education.”

Stone has used the word in the context of an anecdote from an earlier class he taught. In that class, a white student used the epithet to challenge a black student who was arguing against the justification for the fighting-words doctrine. In the story, Stone says that the black student then grabbed the white student around the neck, thereby demonstrating that words can, in fact, lead to violence.

In his essay, Raban called the story racist. After the article was published, Stone said he had spoken with several black students who “were very passionate about how hurtful it was even when it’s being used without the intention of being hurtful.” After that conversation, Stone decided to no longer use the word in class. “I’m persuaded that the value is offset by the distraction and the harm it causes,” he said.

The strong objection to the use of the word, even in a pedagogical context, may be “generational,” Stone said, and a “time may come when the sensitivity is not what it is today.” In an interview with The Chronicle, Stone used the word several times when explaining what had happened in class. When asked whether that was appropriate, he said he had felt it was necessary in order to accurately describe the situation. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t use it in any context whatsoever,” he said.

This is the first time anyone in his Chicago class has complained about the anecdote, Stone said. In 2017, though, during a lecture on freedom of expression at Brown University, Stone told the same story and a student objected during a question-and-answer session afterward, asking the professor to “refrain from openly using racial epithets in public spaces.” Stone, who is a co-editor of the recently published book The Free Speech Century (Oxford University Press), told the audience that not using such words when discussing case law relating to free speech “doesn’t make sense.”

Stone said he didn’t remember telling that story during the Brown lecture, though the back-and-forth with the student was reported by The Chicago Maroon, among other news outlets, under the headline “Free Speech Professor Takes Heat for Using Racial Epithets in Lecture at Brown.”

Few scholars have carved out as prominent a role in free-speech advocacy as Stone. The professor led a university committee that in 2015 adopted a statement on free expression that other institutions have used as a model. The statement, which said that students should not be protected from ideas that “they find unwelcome, disagreeable, or even deeply offensive.” The following year the university sent a note to incoming students stating that trigger warnings and the “creation of intellectual ‘safe spaces’” were anathema to academic freedom.

“College students used to demand the right to free speech,” Stone wrote in a 2016 essay for The Chronicle. “Now they demand the freedom from speech they find upsetting.”

Other law professors have also backpedaled recently after using the N-word in class. Paul Zwier, a law professor at Emory University, used the word last August while discussing a racial-discrimination case. In a letter he explained that “I was rushing at the end of class and should have picked my words more carefully and made my point more clearly.” Last spring administrators at DePaul University’s College of Law canceled a class taught by Donald Hermann, a law professor, who reportedly used the slur as part of a hypothetical example pointing out the provocative power of words.

And a recent controversy at Augsburg University ignited a debate about whether the slur is ever appropriate in the classroom. A student in Philip Adamo’s honors seminar read aloud a passage from James Baldwin’s book The Fire Next Time that included the word. In an ensuing class discussion, Adamo, a professor of history and medieval studies, also used it. The discussion took place in October; in January the university suspended Adamo for “a range of issues raised by students” including bias and discrimination.

Tom Bartlett is a senior writer who covers science and other things. Follow him on Twitter @tebartl.