Nina Totenberg, a longtime legal affairs correspondent for National Public Radio (NPR), will be the keynote speaker at Northwestern University’s 36th annual Leopold Lecture. The event is scheduled for 5 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 21, at Cahn Auditorium in Evanston. Attendance is free and open to the public, though reservations are required.
Totenberg will discuss the U.S. Supreme Court, key legal issues that impact Americans, and significant cases currently before the court. She will be joined in conversation by Laura Beth Nielsen, who holds the Board of Lady Managers of the Columbian Exposition Chair and is a professor of sociology at Northwestern’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences.
According to organizers, members of the public can submit questions and register online for the event.
Totenberg has covered major judicial cases for NPR for more than four decades, with her work regularly featured on “All Things Considered,” “Morning Edition,” and “Weekend Edition.” She is recognized as one of the nation’s most respected journalists covering the Supreme Court.
She authored “Dinners with Ruth: A Memoir on the Power of Friendships” (Simon and Schuster, 2022), which highlights her nearly five-decade friendship with Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Totenberg has received all major journalism awards in broadcasting. In 1998, she became the first radio journalist to win the National Press Foundation’s “Broadcaster of the Year” award. She was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame by the Museum of Broadcast Communications in 2023.
The Leopold Lecture series has hosted notable figures such as U.S. Senators Russ Feingold and Richard Lugar, presidential nominee George McGovern, and former Mexico President Vicente Fox. The lecture series was established in 1990 by undergraduate students to honor Richard W. Leopold—a diplomatic historian who taught at Northwestern for over four decades—and his legacy as an educator.