The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg to Speak at W&L As part of the Mudd Center’s Leadership Lab, Goldberg and W&L’s Eric Deggans will discuss journalism, ethics and leadership in the modern age on March 17.

By Emily Innes Stanley
February 27, 2026

Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic and author of the magazine’s “Signalgate” series, will come to Washington and Lee University for a talk focused on ethical leadership in journalism at a time of tremendous change.

Goldberg will appear with moderator/host Eric Deggans, W&L’s Knight Chair of Journalism and Media Ethics, for a discussion titled “Journalism, Ethics and Leadership in the Modern Age” at 5:10 p.m. on March 17 in Stackhouse Theater in Elrod Commons.

The event marks the first collaboration between the Knight Institute and the Roger Mudd Center for Ethics — two on-campus institutions dedicated to the study and practice of ethics. This conversation between Deggans and Goldberg will be featured as part of the Mudd Center’s Leadership Lab — a series that seeks to generate and support thoughtful discussion about ethical leadership across professions within a globalized world.

The event is free and open to the public. The program will also be streamed online at https://go.wlu.edu/livestream, and a recording will be available afterward.

Goldberg and Deggans will engage in a timely and wide-ranging conversation about the state of modern media and the importance of high-quality journalism in maintaining democracy through an informed citizenry. They will discuss the ethics of leading a newsroom in today’s complicated media and political environment, and how The Atlantic is seeking to provide more prominent leadership in political journalism amid turbulence at the Washington Post, CBS News and other mainstream news outlets.

The two will also talk about The Atlantic’s more impactful stories, including the 2025 “Signalgate” controversy, where Goldberg was included in a text chain on the messaging platform Signal that featured top officials from the Trump administration discussing an upcoming military operation.

Goldberg joined The Atlantic in 2007 as a national correspondent and was named the magazine’s 15th editor-in-chief in 2016. During his editorship, The Atlantic won its first-ever Pulitzer Prizes, set new audience and subscription records and received the National Magazine Award for General Excellence from the American Society of Magazine Editors in 2022, 2023 and 2024.

Before joining The Atlantic, Goldberg served as the Middle East correspondent and then the Washington correspondent for The New Yorker; he has previously written for The New York Times Magazine and The Washington Post. Goldberg is the author of “Prisoners: A Story of Friendship and Terror” (2006) and “On Heroism: McCain, Milley, Mattis, and the Cowardice of Donald Trump” (2024). A former fellow of the American Academy in Berlin, he also served as a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and as the distinguished visiting fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Goldberg is the recipient of numerous awards, including the National Magazine Award for Reporting; the Daniel Pearl Award for Reporting; the Overseas Press Club’s award for human rights reporting; the John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism; and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists Prize for best investigative reporting.

Deggans is a 35-year veteran in media and education and, in addition to his W&L faculty position, serves as critic at large for NPR. He is a member of the National Advisory Board for the Poynter Institute for Media Studies and is chair of the Media Monitoring Committee for the National Association of Black Journalists.

Deggans was hired as NPR’s first full-time television critic in 2013, offering commentary for all network shows, including “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered.” He joined NPR after 18 years as a television and media critic at the Tampa Bay Times; he has also worked at the Asbury Park Press, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Pittsburgh Press and served as a contributor and media analyst for MSNBC and NBC News. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, the Washington Post and Politico, and he is the author of “Race-Baiter: How the Media Wields Dangerous Words to Divide a Nation” (2012). Deggans was inducted into the Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame in 2024 and received the Irene Miller Vigilance in Journalism Award from the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida in 2021. He was named to Ebony Magazine’s Power 150 List in 2009.

The Mudd Center’s Leadership Lab series brings to W&L distinguished speakers from various disciplinary and professional backgrounds to shape a community discussion about ethical leadership and honors the legacy of Mudd Center founder Roger Mudd ’50, a journalist known for his high ethical standards. The series launched in May 2025 with a talk by Kenneth Ruscio ’76, W&L president emeritus, and the most recent installment featured a discussion between Judge Michael Luttig ’76, P’14 and Lewis Powell III ’74, P’18, P’20 in November 2025.