36th Annual Leopold Lecture
Nina Totenberg
NPR’s Award-Winning Legal Affairs Correspondent Famous for Her Supreme Court coverage; Author of Dinners With Ruth (2022)
Tuesday, October 21, 2025 | 5pm
Cahn Auditorium
Tickets will be available through Norris Box Office beginning in late September.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Nina Totenberg shines a light on the inner workings of our nation's highest court and helps audiences understand the impact of headline-making judicial cases on America’s future. One of the country’s most respected journalists and a dean of the press score covering the Supreme Court, Nina is National Public Radio’s award-winning legal affairs correspondent. With more than 40 years’ experience at NPR, her reports are regularly featured on NPR's All Things Considered, Morning Edition, and Weekend Edition.
Nina has won every major journalism award in broadcasting and holds the distinction of being the first radio journalist to have won the National Press Foundation’s “Broadcaster of the Year” award. In 2023 she was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame by the Museum of Broadcast Communications.
Referred to as “the crème de la crème” of NPR by Newsweek, Nina shares her seasoned reflections on the Supreme Court, top legal issues affecting everyday Americans, and the important cases being considered by the court. In-depth and wildly thought-provoking, her deep experience and nuanced perspective provides audiences insight into today’s judicial headlines like no one else can.
A tribute and testament to her nearly 50-year friendship with Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Nina’s memoir, Dinners With Ruth: A Memoir on the Power of Friendships, was published by Simon & Schuster in September of 2022.
Past Leopold Lecturers
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 October 3, 2019U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff The Threat to Liberal Democracy at Home and Abroad |
 October 16, 2018Former president of Mexico Vicente Fox Perspectives and Challenges in U.S.-Mexico Relationships |
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October 22, 2024
October 17, 2023 
October 12, 2022
October 18, 2021
October 8, 2020 
October 24, 2017
October 12, 2016 Richard W. Leopold Lecture
The Leopold Lecture series has brought a variety of distinguished speakers to the Northwestern campus, including U.S. Senators Russ Feingold and Richard Lugar, presidential nominee George McGovern and former Mexico President Vicente Fox.
Professor Leopold’s undergraduate students established the Richard W. Leopold Lectureship within the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences in 1990 to honor the late eminent diplomatic historian and dedicated educator. For more than 40 years, most of them at Northwestern, Leopold distinguished himself as an attentive teacher.
Generations of undergraduate students, many of whom enjoy successful careers as educators, writers, lawyers and public officials, remember Leopold’s scholarship, teaching and friendship. The lectureship honors Leopold’s contribution to the University and recognizes his enduring influence on the lives of his students.
About Richard W. Leopold
Richard W. Leopold, William Smith Mason Professor of History Emeritus, enjoyed a distinguished career as a scholar and teacher. Graduating from Princeton University in 1933, he received his doctorate in 1938 from Harvard University. After 11 years on the Harvard faculty and as a naval officer in Washington, D.C., he came to Northwestern University in 1948.
In subsequent years, he became a member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton and a Northwestern University President’s Fellow. In 1976, he received a distinguished teaching award in the College, a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, and was elected president of the Organization of American Historians. Leopold wrote The Growth of American Foreign Policy: A History; Elihu Root and the Conservative Tradition, and Robert Dale Owen: A Biography, as well as many articles and reviews. His work has been recognized by the Organization of American Historians, which established the bi-annual Richard W. Leopold Prize for a distinguished book by a government historian and in 1992 gave Leopold its Distinguished Service Award. In addition to his work within the University, Leopold served on numerous government committees concerned with preserving historical data. Professor Leopold passed away in Evanston in 2006 at age 94.