Dr Jeffrey Howard

Associate Professor of Political Philosophy and Public Policy
Room: 1.02, 31 Tavistock Square
Telephone: 0203 108 6939
Email: jeffrey.howard@ucl.ac.uk
Twitter
Website

Biography

I am Associate Professor of Political Philosophy and Public Policy at UCL. I hold a DPhil from Oxford University and an AB from Harvard University. At UCL I hold appointments in the Department of Political Science, School of Public Policy, and (by affiliation) Department of Philosophy. I am a UKRI Future Leader Fellow, British Academy Rising Star, and BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker. I was the recipient of the 2021 Berger Memorial Prize from the American Philosophical Association. My work on freedom of expression, social media, democracy, social contract theory, crime and punishment, and counter-extremism has appeared in many journals including Philosophy & Public Affairs, The Journal of Political Philosophy, Law and Philosophy, British Journal of Political Science, and the Annual Review of Political Science. I am currently writing a book on free speech in the age of social media.

I have taught a wide range of courses in political, legal and moral philosophy, with an emphasis on ethics and public policy. I currently teach the ethics component of the leadership training course for civil servants within HM Treasury. At UCL I have twice won the departmental Prize for Outstanding Faculty Teaching, as well as a UCL Education Award for my educational leadership. At the University of Essex, where I previously taught, I won the Best Lecturer at the University Award, and the THINK course I created won The Guardian’s University Award for Student Experience.

I am currently an Affiliated Faculty Fellow in the Conceptual Foundations of Conflict Project in the School of Philosophy at the University of Southern California, and I have previously been a visiting scholar in the School of Philosophy at the Australian National University.

Research

I currently direct the UCL Online Speech Project, which produces empirically informed philosophical guidance on how to improve the digital public sphere. As part of this project, I am working on a range of normative questions concerning the ethics of content moderation, algorithmic amplification, and public discourse. My team synthesizes expertise in political and moral philosophy, the philosophy of language, law and regulation, and computational social science.

I have previously published on a wide range of topics in political, moral, and legal philosophy. My recent publications have concerned freedom of speech and its limits, the moral duties of platforms, and the ethics of counter-speech. I have also published widely on the philosophy of crime and punishment and on topics in normative democratic theory.

Publications

Book chapters

Howard, J. W. (2021) ‘Extreme Speech, Democratic Deliberation, and Social Media’, in C. Véliz (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Digital Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Howard, J. W. (2021) ‘Coronavirus Misinformation, Freedom of Speech, and Social Media’, in F. Niker and A. Bhattacharya (eds.) Political Philosophy in a Pandemic. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, pp. 167–176.
Howard, J. (2018) ‘The Public Role of Ethics and Public Policy’, in A. Lever and A. Poama (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Ethics and Public Policy. London: Routledge.

Journal articles

Howard, J. W. and Pasternak, A. (2023) ‘Criminal Wrongdoing, Restorative Justice, and the Moral Standing of Unjust States’, The Journal of Political Philosophy, 31(1), pp. 42–59.
Howard, J. W. (2022) ‘Democratic Speech in Divided Times. By Maxime Lepoutre. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021’, Perspectives on Politics, 20(2), pp. 714–716.
Howard, J. W. (2021) ‘Terror, Hate and the Demands of Counter-Speech’, British Journal of Political Science, 51(3), pp. 924–939.
Howard, J. W. (2020) ‘Defending Broad Neutrality’, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 23(1), pp. 36–47.
Bardon, A. and Howard, J. W. (2020) ‘Introduction: Laborde, Liberalism, and Religion’, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 23(1), pp. 1–8.
Howard, J. W. (2020) ‘Yaffe on Democratic Citizenship and Juvenile Justice’, Criminal Law and Philosophy, 14, pp. 241–255.
Howard, J. W. (2019) ‘Dangerous Speech’, Philosophy & Public Affairs, 47(2), pp. 208–254.
Howard, J. W. (2019) ‘Free Speech and Hate Speech’, Annual Review of Political Science, 22(1), pp. 93–109.
Howard, J. W. (2019) ‘The Labors of Justice: Democracy, Respect, and Judicial Review’, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 22(2), pp. 176–199.
Howard, J. W. (2018) ‘Kidnapped: The Ethics of Paying Ransoms’, Journal of Applied Philosophy, 35(4), pp. 675–688.
Howard, J. W. (2017) ‘Punishment as Moral Fortification’, Law and Philosophy, 36, pp. 45–75
Howard, J. W. (2016) ‘Moral Subversion and Structural Entrapment’, Journal of Political Philosophy, 24(1), pp. 24–46.
Howard, J. W. (2015) ‘Democracy as the Search for Justice: A Defence of the Democracy/Contractualism Analogy’, Political Studies, 63(1), pp. 259–275.
Howard, J. W. (2015) ‘The Instability of Democratic Contractarianism’, Political Studies Reviews,13(2), pp. 184–195.
Howard, J. (2013) ‘Punishment, Socially Deprived Offenders, and Democratic Community’, Criminal Law and Philosophy, 7(1), pp. 121–136.

Teaching

I have previously taught courses on contemporary political philosophy, the history of political thought, practical ethics, ethics and public policy, liberalism, egalitarianism, the philosophy of crime and punishment, global justice, just war theory and the ethics of counterterrorism, and philosophical methodology.

I have supervised multiple doctoral dissertations to completion on a range of topics in contemporary political philosophy. I welcome applications from prospective doctoral candidates working on issues related to freedom of speech, social media regulation, and the ethics of democratic discourse.