Joseph Howley

Joseph A. Howley is an American academic scholar, author and social activist. He is Associate Professor of Classics at Columbia University, where his teaching and research focus on the history of reading, the social life of books, and Roman antiquarian traditions.

Howley studied ancient history and literature at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, graduating with a B.A. in 2005.^[1] He continued his studies at the University of St Andrews in Scotland earning an M.Litt. in 2007 and completing a Ph.D. in 2011.^[1] His doctoral thesis examined Roman antiquarianism and the cultural role of Aulus Gellius’s Noctes Atticae.

Howley joined the Columbia University Department of Classics in 2011 as an assistant professor and was later promoted to associate professor.^[1] He also teaches in the university’s Core Curriculum, contributing to courses such as Literature Humanities and Contemporary Civilization, and is a member of Columbia's faculty senate.

Prior to his position at Columbia, Howley was a Teaching Fellow in Latin and Classics Studies in the School of Classics at the University of St. Andrews.^[2]

His first book, Aulus Gellius and Roman Reading Culture: Text, Presence and Imperial Knowledge in the Noctes Atticae, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2018.^[3] The volume explores how Gellius presented knowledge and identity in the Roman Empire. It has been reviewed in several scholarly journals, including the Bryn Mawr Classical Review.^[4]

In addition to his monograph, Howley published articles and book chapters on Latin literature, antiquarianism, and the history of knowledge. At Columbia, he has also supervised graduate research and collaborated on courses linking classics with intellectual history and the history of the book.^[1]

Howley also serves as the secretary of the Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School in Charlottesville, VA.

Alongside his academic work, Howley has been a prominent participant in campus debates about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, free expression and political activism.^[5]

Howley has been a prominent supporter of pro‑Palestinian student protests at Columbia University, including campus encampments calling for the university to divest from companies linked to Israel.^[6] In interviews, he has strongly criticized Israeli military operations in Gaza, at times referring to them as "genocide."^[7][8] Supporters have praised him for defending student activism and academic freedom, while critics, including some Jewish advocacy organizations, have accused him of downplaying antisemitism on campus.^[9]

In March 2025, he spoke publicly in defense of Columbia student activist Mahmoud Khalil, arguing against what he described as political pressure on universities. The speech was later printed in Literary Hub, where he wrote that "it is always dangerous to speak in public for Palestinian rights … People will try to get you fired …".^[10] In the same month, he also condemned the federal governments actions regarding the activism and protests at Columbia, saying "it's pretty rich that we have to take accusations of antisemitism from an administration staffed by noe-Nazis, segregationists and 'Great replacement' theorists".^[11]

He participated in faculty rallies that opposed federal intervention in university governance. Notably, in April 2025 he helped publicize the ICE detainment of Mohsen Mahdawi during a demonstration titled “Hands off our university.”^[12]

Howley has been interviewed in national forums such as WNYC and CBC discussing academic freedom and student activism. He contributed essays and opinion pieces to The Nation and the Columbia Spectator and UnHerd on questions of free speech, antisemitism, and the politics of university life.^[13][14][15] He also addressed questions around protest tactics, writing that he did not endorse exclusion as a demonstration tactic and disputed claims of systematic exclusion during encampment protests he supported.^[16]

• Aulus Gellius and Roman Reading Culture: Text, Presence and Imperial Knowledge in the Noctes Atticae. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. ISBN 9781108425714.^[3]
• Co-editor (with Christina Kraus), Oxford Handbook of Roman Imagines. Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming.
• “The Uses of Aulus Gellius.” In Jason König and Tim Whitmarsh (eds.), Literature and Culture in the Roman Empire, 96–235. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016, pp. 295–314.
• “Front Matter.” In Noctes Atticae (Loeb Classical Library edition), Harvard University Press, 2020.
• “Why Books Matter: Libraries and the History of Reading in Rome.” In Yun Lee Too (ed.), Handbook of Ancient Libraries. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019, pp. 209–230.
• “Books and Reading in the Roman World.” In Alessandro Barchiesi and Walter Scheidel (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Roman Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010, pp. 719–734.

• Aulus Gellius
• Columbia University Department of Classics
• Academic freedom in the United States

• [Columbia University Department of Classics – Joseph A. Howley](https://classics.columbia.edu/joseph-howley)