W&L’s Mudd Center for Ethics Hosts Annual Conference The two-day virtual conference will begin March 6 and feature students located across the country.

By Erica Turman
March 4, 2021

Washington and Lee University’s Mudd Center for Ethics will host a two-day virtual conference on March 6 and 7.

The conference is the only open undergraduate conference in the country solely dedicated to the academic study of ethical issues. All accepted speakers will have the opportunity to not only present their papers at the conference, but also to have them published in the Mudd Journal of Ethics. The conference is free and open to the public to watch online, but registration is required and can be accessed here.

“The circumstances of this year have required us to plan for a virtual conference, which has created both new challenges and opportunities,” said Clare Perry ’21, editor-in-chief of the Mudd Journal of Ethics. “Although the in-person discussion of a typical Mudd Center conference will certainly be missed, we’re so excited for the diverse range of student participants and viewers that the virtual format allows us to include.”

There will be multiple student presenters from universities and colleges across the United States throughout the day on March 6. A full schedule of events is available online here.

Nandi Theunissen, associate professor of philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh, will deliver the keynote address, titled “An Explanation of the Value of Human Beings,” on March 7. She works on theoretical topics in ethics with a focus on the nature of value.

“Professor Theunissen will be discussing her non-Kantian construction of human value in her talk,” said Perry. “The Mudd Journal staff is excited for a weekend of lively ethical discussion and hopes the community can join us.”

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.