Below is an overview of some campus activities:

Washington and Lee University recognizes freedom of expression as essential to intellectual inquiry and liberal arts education.  As President William C. Dudley wrote in his 2022 opinion piece on Free Inquiry and Expression on College Campuses, our mission statement commits us to the unfettered and civil exchange of ideas. Recent examples of our commitment include:

• Participation by the President and other senior leaders in conferences and events sponsored by the Bipartisan Policy Institute and the University of Chicago Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression
• The President’s Fall message to the campus community, foregrounding the importance of intellectual pluralism and the need to provide a setting in which all ideas can be freely exchanged and discussed
• Organizing a series of faculty panels on the conflict in the Middle East
• Hosting a Steamboat Institute debate on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Policies
• A series of events and speakers focused on freedom of expression and civil discourse at the beginning of the academic year
• A convocation address by Roosevelt Montas, director of the Freedom and Citizenship program at Columbia University
• A keynote address on the upcoming presidential election and the topic of freedom of expression on small liberal arts college campuses during our annual professional development week for faculty and staff
• A workshop with faculty who participated in an Associated Colleges of the South grant-funded series on facilitating difficult conversations in the classroom—part of that cohort’s ongoing work to educate and provide pedagogical resources for their peers
• A session focused on institutional neutrality and intellectual pluralism at our annual summer leadership retreat
• A discussion of values and how to handle conflict with others when values do not align in our First Year Experience course

We are also committed to civic education. Our mission statement commits us to preparing our graduates for engaged citizenship in a global and diverse society. As we approach the presidential election, student organizations are providing students with information on voter registration information and absentee ballots. The College Democrats and College Republicans are actively engaged with their local political parties, and the university will provide students with rides to and from area polling locations on Election Day. We have also planned pre- and post-election panels to discuss the issues and results with faculty experts.

This academic year, we plan to host the Congress to Campus program, providing students with an opportunity to engage with bipartisan teams of Former Members of Congress. We have also begun the process of identifying a Faculty Fellow in Intellectual Pluralism, a two-year appointment designed for a faculty member who is interested in developing and implementing programming to further foster the open, civil, and free exchange of a variety of ideas and perspectives at W&L.