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
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Biography

I am Associate Professor of Political Philosophy and Public Policy at UCL and Senior Research Associate at the Institute for Ethics in AI at Oxford University. 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 (as affiliate faculty) Department of Philosophy. I direct the Digital Speech Lab, which produces empirically informed philosophical guidance on how to improve the digital public sphere. I am a UKRI Future Leader Fellow, British Academy Rising Star, BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker, and recipient of the Berger Memorial Prize from the American Philosophical Association. My work on freedom of expression, social media, democracy, 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 completing a monograph (Setting Fire to Reason: The Ethics of Free Speech), under contract with Princeton University Press.

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 Award for Best Lecturer at the University, and the THINK course I created won The Guardian’s University Award for Student Experience. I have served as a 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 Digital Speech Lab, which hosts a range of research projects on the proper governance of online communications. Its purpose is to identify the fundamental principles that should guide the private and public regulation of online speech, and to trace those principles’ concrete implications in the face of difficult dilemmas about how best to respect free speech while preventing harm. The research team synthesizes expertise in political and moral philosophy, the philosophy of language, law and regulation, political science, and computer science. It is funded by a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship.

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.