The Mudd Center
- About the Mudd Center
- People
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Programs and Events
- 2025-2026: Taking Place: Land Use and Environmental Impact
- 2024-2025: How We Live and Die: Stories, Values, and Communities
- 2023-2024: Ethics of Design
- 2022-2023: Beneficence: Practicing an Ethics of Care
- 2021-2022: Daily Ethics: How Individual Choices and Habits Express Our Values and Shape Our World
- 2020-2021: Global Ethics in the 21st Century: Challenges and Opportunities
- 2019-2020: The Ethics of Technology
- 2018-2019: The Ethics of Identity
- 2017-2018: Equality and Difference
- 2016-2017: Markets and Morals
- 2015-2016: The Ethics of Citizenship
- 2014-2015: Race and Justice in America
- Leadership Lab
- Mudd Undergraduate Journal of Ethics
- Highlights
- Mudd Center Fellows Program
- Get Involved
The Roger Mudd Center for Ethics advances dialogue, teaching, and research about issues of public and professional ethics across all three of the University’s schools - the College, the Williams School, and the School of Law.
Yearly Ethics Theme
Taking Place: Land Use and Environmental Impact
The Mudd Center’s 2025-26 multi-disciplinary program will investigate the complex interplay between land use and the environment, with a particular focus on issues related to green technologies, biodiversity, and health. Through a lecture series, symposium, photographic exhibition, documentary viewing and community engagements, the Mudd Center will analyze various meanings of “taking place” and the ethics of how we use and manage the natural environment and land resources. Central to our investigation are guiding questions that explore environmental ethics and their applications, such as: Can seemingly competing interests and values, such as economic gain and environmental justice, be reconciled? What responsibilities and ethical challenges emerge when humans intervene to restore ecosystems? And, perhaps most importantly, how might we bring conversations about environmental conservation and land use into a non-partisan arena even when there may be deep ideological divisions?
Upcoming Public Events
The Mudd Center
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Washington and Lee University
209 Mattingly House
Lexington, VA 24450
W&L’s Mudd Center Announces 2025-26 Lecture Series
“Taking Place: Land Use and Environmental Impact” kicks off Sept. 11 with a keynote address by political scientist Thea Riofrancos.
Melissa Kerin Quoted in ProPublica Article
The professor of art history and director of the Mudd Center for Ethics offered her opinion on the nuances of the return of a Buddha sculpture by the Art Institute of Chicago to the Government of Nepal.
W&L’s Mudd Center Announces Leadership Lab Initiative
The public lecture series kicks off May 7 with an inaugural talk by Kenneth Ruscio ’76.
Students in W&L’s Bonner Program spent the last year creating a digital map of health care networks for people experiencing homelessness worldwide.
Jim Withers is the Next Speaker in the Mudd Lecture Series
Withers, founder of the Street Medicine Institute, will give a lecture on March 26 at 5 p.m. in Stackhouse Theater on W&L’s campus.
W&L Presents an Evening with Playwright and Actor Christine Toy Johnson
Johnson will present excerpts of her recent musical and give a public talk on March 24 at 7 p.m. in Johnson Theater.
Mudd Lecture Series to Examine the Ethics of Medical Aid in Dying
The virtual panel discussion will take place on Feb. 11 at 4 p.m.
Erica Lord is the Next Speaker in the Mudd Lecture Series
Lord, a multimedia artist at the Institute of American Indian Arts, will give a lecture on Jan. 14 at 5:30 p.m. in Wilson Concert Hall.
W&L’s Staniar Gallery Presents Erica Lord’s ‘The Codes We Carry: Beads as DNA Data’
The solo exhibition will open Jan. 9 with an artist’s talk slated for Jan. 14.
Carl Elliott is the Next Speaker in the Mudd Lecture Series
Elliott, a bioethicist at the University of Minnesota, will give a lecture on Nov. 14 at 5 p.m. in Northen Auditorium.
Lawyer and Historian Paul Lombardo to Deliver Lecture on Buck v. Priddy Court Case
The Nov. 18 lecture is open to the public and marks the centenary of the case argued in Amherst County, Virginia.
‘W&L After Class’ Podcast Releases New Episode Featuring Melissa Kerin
In this month’s episode, Kerin, professor of art history, discusses how following her curiosity of the ways in which people tell stories opened her to opportunities to study remote Buddhist shrines in the Himalayas and examine how we live and die as the director of the Roger Mudd Center for Ethics.