The Mudd Center

Erica Lord with group

The Roger Mudd Center for Ethics advances dialogue, teaching, and research about issues of public and professional ethics across all three of the University’s schools - the College, the Williams School, and the School of Law.

Yearly Ethics Theme

How We Live & Die banner

How We Live and Die: Stories, Values, and Communities

The layered and productive relationships of ethics, medicine, and narrative are at the heart of this year’s examination of the four pillars of western medical ethics: autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice. With an emphasis on narrative and testimony, the series will offer a multidisciplinary inquiry-from the fields of anthropology, art, ethics, law, medicine, and religion-into poignant questions and dilemmas related to medical research, care, and access. For instance, what happens when the harms of a medical experiment are not conveyed to its subjects? What does it mean to die with dignity? What are the conflicting social values and personal beliefs around such a practice? Why do specific diseases disproportionately affect indigenous populations in the Americas? Who has the moral responsibility to respond to such endemic disease and how? Is there a social obligation to provide healthcare to all? These questions and others bear directly on how we conceive of notions of autonomy, beneficence, non-harm, and justice, which in turn affect how we live and die.

Upcoming Public Events

Sep 11 - 5:10 pm - 6:10 pm

Mudd Center Speaker: Thea Riofrancos

Mudd Center Speaker: TBD

Sep 30 - 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm

Mudd Center: Anthropocene: The Human Epoch

Anthropocene: The Human Epoch. This is a “cinematic meditation on humanity’s massive reengineering of the planet.”

Mudd Center News


Melissa Kerin Quoted in ProPublica Article

The professor of art history and director of the Mudd Center for Ethics offered her opinion on the nuances of the return of a Buddha sculpture by the Art Institute of Chicago to the Government of Nepal.

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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.

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Connecting a Global Movement

Students in W&L’s Bonner Program spent the last year creating a digital map of health care networks for people experiencing homelessness worldwide.

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