W&L Professor, Physician Alumnus to Deliver Talk in 2021 Mudd Series Assistant Professor Erin Taylor and Dr. Ralph Caldroney’s public discussion, which is open to the public to view online, is titled "Ethical Issues in the Context of Covid-19."
Erin Taylor, professor of philosophy at Washington and Lee University, and Dr. Ralph Caldroney ’72, a physician specializing in internal medicine, will give a virtual lecture on Feb. 2 at 5 p.m. as part of Washington and Lee University’s Mudd Center for Ethics series on Global Ethics in the 21st Century: Challenges and Opportunities. The series is a collaboration between the Mudd Center and the university’s Center for International Education.
Their discussion, which is open to the public to view online, is titled “Ethical Issues in the Context of Covid-19.” The event is free, but registration is required and can be accessed here.
Taylor joined the W&L’s Department of Philosophy as an assistant professor in 2016. Her work is in normative ethics, political philosophy and bioethics, focusing mainly on role obligations and associative duties. Taylor’s writings include publications in the American Philosophical Quarterly and the Australasian Journal of Philosophy. She teaches courses in ancient philosophy, ethics, social and political philosophy, medical ethics and poverty studies. Her doctorate is from the University of California Los Angeles, and her undergraduate degree is from Florida International University.
Caldroney received his M.D. from the Medical College of Virginia at Virginia Commonwealth University in 1976. He trained in internal medicine at the Medical University of South Carolina and held a fellowship in critical care medicine at the University of Florida. Caldroney spent seven years teaching medical staff at the University of Kentucky Medical Center, and then more than 25 years in private practice in Lexington, Kentucky. In addition to private practice, Caldroney spent eight years in the U.S. Army Reserves, starting in 2001, with deployments to Landstuhl, Germany; Camp Bucca, Iraq; and Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan.
The Mudd Center was established in 2010 through a gift to the university from award-winning journalist Roger Mudd, a 1950 graduate of W&L. By facilitating collaboration across traditional institutional boundaries, the center aims to encourage a multidisciplinary perspective on ethics informed by both theory and practice. Previous Mudd Center lecture series topics have included Race and Justice in America, The Ethics of Citizenship, Markets and Morals, Equality and Difference, The Ethics of Identity and The Ethics of Technology.
