Investigative Reporter Jane Mayer to Deliver Leopold Lecture

EVANSTON, Ill. --- Investigative journalist Jane Mayer has written about Sarah Palin, the bin Laden family, the secret torture policy of the CIA and Pentagon as well as for the television show “24.” On Thursday, Oct. 21, the New Yorker magazine staff writer will deliver the 21st annual Leopold Lecture at Northwestern University.

The event will take place at 7:30 p.m. in the McCormick Tribune Center Forum, 1870 Campus Drive, on the University’s Evanston campus. A reception will follow the free, public lecture titled “Is Liberty the Price for Security in Fighting Terrorism?”

At the Wall Street Journal, Mayer spent more than a decade covering such stories as the bombing of American Marine barracks in Beirut, the Persian Gulf War, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the final days of Communism in the Soviet Union. Recently, in the New Yorker, she wrote about David H. and Charles Koch, two lifelong libertarians who, in her words, “have quietly given more than $100 million to right-wing causes.”

Mayer has won award after award for her coverage of politics and national security, including the 2008 John Chancellor Award for Journalistic Excellence and the 2009 Lukas Prize from Columbia University for journalism promoting social justice.

Her best-selling book “The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War in Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals” was chosen as one of 2008’s best books by The New York Times, The Economist, Salon magazine, Bloomberg News and Slate magazine. The book also earned Mayer the 2009 Goldsmith Book Prize from Harvard, the New York Library’s Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism and the Robert F. Kennedy Book Prize.

Mayer is co-author of two other best-selling books, “Strange Justice” (with Jill Abramson) and “Landslide: The Unmaking of the President, 1984-1988” (with Doyle McManus).

The Leopold Lecture was established in 1990 by former students of Richard W. Leopold, an eminent diplomatic historian and dedicated professor. For more than four decades, Leopold nurtured Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences undergraduates. The University’s Nicholas D. Chabraja Center for Historical Studies sponsors an undergraduate program that honors Leopold’s teaching and scholarship.

Past Leopold lecturers include McGeorge Bundy, George McGovern, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Fareed Zakaria, Tom Daschle and Seymour Hersh.

For more about the Leopold Lecture, visit http://www.weinberg.northwestern.edu/ or call (847) 467-3005.

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