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.

By Emily Innes
May 1, 2025

The Washington and Lee University Roger Mudd Center for Ethics presents the Leadership Lab, a new series that seeks to generate and support thoughtful discussion about ethical leadership across professions within a globalized world.

The public lecture series will bring to W&L distinguished speakers from various disciplinary and professional backgrounds to shape a community discussion about ethical leadership.

“We were asking how the Mudd Center might meet this particular national and international moment where questions of leadership, ethics and social responsibility are at the fore,” said Melissa Kerin, the director of the Mudd Center. “The Mudd Center wanted to offer a space that could serve as a veritable touchstone of ethical leadership practices and models.”

The series kicks off at 11:30 a.m. on May 7 in Leyburn Library 128, with an inaugural talk by Kenneth Ruscio ’76, W&L president emeritus, titled “Reflections on Ethical Leadership in Contemporary Times.”

Registration is required, and lunch will be served at 11:30, followed by Ruscio’s lecture.

Drawing from the practice and study of leadership across democracies, Ruscio will explore how humility and trust distinguish true leadership from the mere use of power and how these qualities are informed and sustained by notions of the collective good.

Ruscio served as president of Washington and Lee University from 2006-2016. During his tenure, he oversaw a number of critical projects, including the creation of the Roger Mudd Center for Ethics. Prior to becoming W&L’s 26th president, Ruscio served as the University of Richmond’s dean of the Jepson School of Leadership Studies from 2002 to 2006 and held several faculty and staff positions at W&L from 1987 to 2002. He was president of the Virginia Foundation for Independent Colleges from 2017-2018 and a senior distinguished lecturer at the Jepson School from 2019-2023.

Ruscio is also considered an expert on democratic theory and public policy and is the author of “The Leadership Dilemma in Modern Democracy” (2004). He currently serves on the boards of Skidmore College in New York, the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia and the Collegiate School in Richmond.

For more information and registration details, visit the series webpage.

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 Global Ethics in the 21st Century, Race and Justice in America, The Ethics of Citizenship, Markets and Morals, Equality and Difference, The Ethics of Identity, The Ethics of Technology, Daily Ethics and Beneficence, and the Ethics of Design.