W&L’s Liberating Ideas Initiative to Host Inaugural Wonder Dinner The event, set for Monday, Nov. 2, in the Cannan Green Pavilion, features a pair of distinguished guest speakers on the topic of parental choice in gene-based medicine.

By Brian Laubscher
October 15, 2026

Washington and Lee University will host its inaugural Wonder Dinner, a signature program of the university’s Liberating Ideas initiative. The event, which is open to members of the W&L community, will be held at 6 p.m. Monday, Nov. 2, in the Cannan Green Pavilion. Campus members interested in attending are required to register online.

Titled “Choosing for a Child: Promise, Risk and Responsibility in Gene-Based Medicine,” the first Wonder Dinner will consider how parents and physicians weigh hope, risk and uncertainty and what limits should govern parental choice. The conversation will also explore how unequal access affects the meaning of medical choice and what regulatory structures should accompany medicine’s growing ability to intervene in genetic disease. The topic connects to themes in the first-year read, Kazuo Ishiguro’s “Klara and the Sun.”

The evening will begin with brief reflections from the invited speakers, Dr. India Sisler of Virginia Commonwealth University and Margaret Foster Riley of the University of Virginia. Nadia Ayoub, the John T. Herwick M.D. Professor of Biology at W&L, will then moderate a discussion with the speakers, followed by facilitated conversations at each table during dinner.

“We designed these dinner conversations to help the W&L community consider presentations by various experts as the springboard for an earnest exchange of opinions,” said Lucas Morel, the Provost Faculty Fellow for Liberating Ideas and John K. Boardman Jr. Professor of Politics. “Guided by trained student facilitators, attendees at each table will practice the kind of civil discourse that citizens need to govern themselves as a free and diverse people.”

“Building on W&L’s mission, Honor System and Speaking Tradition, the Wonder Dinners seek to strengthen civil discourse as a durable institutional practice and to prepare graduates for principled disagreement and engaged citizenship,” said Lena Hill, provost and professor of English and Africana Studies. “Although the dinners begin with accomplished speakers, their purpose is not simply to present ideas to an audience. They invite students, faculty and staff to think together about the ideas the speakers introduce and to become active participants in the intellectual exchange.”

The program, which will feature three dinners across the academic year, developed from a central tenet of a liberal arts education — that students should bring a sense of “wonder,” a deep curiosity about their studies, and sustain the habit of “wondering,” actively questioning and interrogating ideas they encounter at W&L. The dinners also advance the goals of the Liberating Ideas initiative, which promotes intellectual pluralism and inclusion by fostering independent thinking and civil discourse.

“A member of the Liberating Ideas advisory board recently told our entering first-years that a university should be a place where we can speak freely, yet humbly, without knowing for sure, delight in difficult questions, change our minds and explore ideas without being required to arrive with settled answers,” Hill said. “That sentiment is at the heart of the Wonder Dinners. We hope that robust conversation over good food will contribute to the vitality of W&L’s distinctive intellectual culture.”

Sisler is a nationally recognized clinician and leader with deep expertise in pediatric hematology and oncology, particularly sickle cell disease, care transitions, quality improvement and multidisciplinary program development. She joined the VCU faculty and the Children’s Hospital of Richmond at VCU in 2009 and currently serves as professor of pediatrics and chief of the Division of Pediatric Hematology and Oncology and vice chair for faculty development in the Department of Pediatrics. She has directed the Comprehensive Pediatric Sickle Cell Program since 2009. Throughout her tenure, she has played a central role in expanding access to high-quality, comprehensive care for children and adolescents across central Virginia. Sisler earned her bachelor’s degree at the College of William & Mary and her medical degree at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. She completed her pediatric residency and fellowship training in pediatric hematology and oncology at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Riley is the Dorothy Danforth Compton Professor at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, a professor of law at the UVA School of Law, a professor of public health sciences at the UVA School of Medicine and a professor of public policy at the university’s Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. Her scholarship sits at the intersection of law, regulation, policy, and ethics in the life sciences. She has written and presented extensively about healthcare law, biomedical research, genetics, food and drug regulation, reproductive technologies, human and animal biotechnology and public health. Riley has advised numerous state and federal agencies and organizations, including the Food and Drug Administration, the Virginia Department of Health and the Virginia Bar. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Duke University and a law degree from Columbia University.