Dr Jeffrey Howard

Jeffrey Howard is Associate Professor of Political Philosophy and Public Policy at UCL and Senior Research Associate at the Institute for Ethics in AI at Oxford University. His work on freedom of expression, social media, democracy, crime and punishment, and counter-extremism has appeared in leading academic journals of philosophy and political science. Dr Howard is currently completing a monograph (Setting Fire to Reason: The Ethics of Free Speech), under contract with Princeton University Press. Dr Howard currently directs 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.  He has commented regularly on ethical controversies that arise in current affairs, both on TV (BBC News Channel, Bloomberg, CNBC, Sky) and radio (BBC Radio 3 and 4, BBC Radio London, NPR).

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Expertise

• Free speech
• Social media
• Ethics of artifical intelligence
• Political ethics
• Crime and punishment
• Counter-terrorism
• Political leadership