Biography

Stephen Bates is a professor in the Hank Greenspun School of Journalism and Media Studies at UNLV. He teaches classes on free speech, censorship, privacy, and media politics.

His research focuses on the First Amendment. He is the author of An Aristocracy of Critics: Luce, Hutchins, Niebuhr, and the Committee That Redefined Freedom of the Press (Yale University Press), as well as books on the history of journalism, political advertising, and religious freedom. His articles have appeared in Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, Communication Law and Policy, American Journalism, Journalism History, and the International Journal of Communication, as well as the Washington Post Magazine, American Heritage, the Wall Street Journal, and the Wilson Quarterly, where he spent nine years as literary editor. He holds an A.B. and a J.D. from Harvard University.

A former board member of the ACLU of Nevada, Bates is a member of the advisory board of the Black Mountain Institute at UNLV. He has been a fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the Annenberg Washington Program in Communications Policy Studies, and the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy [photo by Martha Stewart Photography].