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Credit Steve Barrett / NPR

Nina Totenberg is NPR's award-winning legal affairs correspondent. Her reports air regularly on NPR's critically acclaimed newsmagazines All Things Considered, Morning Edition, and Weekend Edition.

Totenberg's coverage of the Supreme Court and legal affairs has won her widespread recognition. Newsweek says, "The mainstays [of NPR] are Morning Edition and All Things Considered. But the creme de la creme is Nina Totenberg." She is also a regular panelist on Inside Washington, a weekly syndicated public affairs television program produced in the nation's capital.

In 1991, her ground-breaking report about University of Oklahoma Law Professor Anita Hill's allegations of sexual harassment by Judge Clarence Thomas led the Senate Judiciary Committee to re-open Thomas's Supreme Court confirmation hearings to consider Hill's charges. NPR received the prestigious George Foster Peabody Award for its gavel-to-gavel coverage — anchored by Totenberg — of both the original hearings and the inquiry into Anita Hill's allegations, and for Totenberg's reports and exclusive interview with Hill.

That same coverage earned Totenberg additional awards, among them: the Long Island University George Polk Award for excellence in journalism; the Sigma Delta Chi Award from the Society of Professional Journalists for investigative reporting; the Carr Van Anda Award from the Scripps School of Journalism; and the prestigious Joan S. Barone Award for excellence in Washington-based national affairs/public policy reporting, which also acknowledged her coverage of Justice Thurgood Marshall's retirement.

Totenberg was named Broadcaster of the Year and honored with the 1998 Sol Taishoff Award for Excellence in Broadcasting from the National Press Foundation. She is the first radio journalist to receive the award. She is also the recipient of the American Judicature Society's first-ever award honoring a career body of work in the field of journalism and the law. In 1988, Totenberg won the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Silver Baton for her coverage of Supreme Court nominations. The jurors of the award stated, "Ms. Totenberg broke the story of Judge (Douglas) Ginsburg's use of marijuana, raising issues of changing social values and credibility with careful perspective under deadline pressure."

Totenberg has been honored seven times by the American Bar Association for continued excellence in legal reporting and has received a number of honorary degrees. On a lighter note, in 1992 and 1988 Esquire magazine named her one of the "Women We Love".

A frequent contributor to major newspapers and periodicals, she has published articles in The New York Times Magazine, The Harvard Law Review, The Christian Science Monitor, Parade Magazine, New York Magazine, and others.

Before joining NPR in 1975, Totenberg served as Washington editor of New Times Magazine, and before that she was the legal affairs correspondent for the National Observer.

Race

1:30 am

Mon October 1, 2012

Integrating Ole Miss: A Transformative, Deadly Riot

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Credit AP

Meredith, center with briefcase, is escorted to the University of Mississippi campus by U.S. marshals on Oct. 1, 1962.

Credit Jim Bourdier / AP

Meredith received his Bachelor of Arts degree in graduation ceremonies in August 1963. He had already taken several years of college courses at an all-black college before enrolling at Ole Miss.

Credit AP

Policemen keep a cheering mob back as Meredith drives away after being refused admittance to the all-white university in Oxford, Miss. It took several attempts for him to enroll, as he was physically blocked on campus by Gov. Ross Barnett.

Credit AP

Hundreds of Ole Miss students crowd the street in front of the registrar's office, hoisting a Confederate flag and shouting for continued segregation.

Credit Courtesy of Ed Meek

Meredith sits alone on his first day of class. A photographer who was there remembers the other students leaving the room in protest.

Credit Debbie Elliott / NPR

James Meredith, now 79, is working to improve the public education system in Mississippi, which he says never achieved real integration.

Credit Courtesy of Blair Hobbs

Marleah Kaufman Hobbs, 89, was a fine arts graduate student at Ole Miss in 1962 during the campus riots. Back then, she painted Burning Man in response to the violence.

By Debbie Elliott

Originally published on Tue October 2, 2012 10:07 am

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Fifty years ago — Oct. 1, 1962 — the first black student was admitted to the University of Mississippi, a bastion of the Old South.

The town of Oxford erupted. It took some 30,000 U.S. troops, federal marshals and national guardsmen to get James Meredith to class after a violent campus uprising. Two people were killed and more than 300 injured. Some historians say the integration of Ole Miss was the last battle of the Civil War.

It was a high-stakes showdown between President Kennedy and Mississippi Gov. Ross Barnett.

1:29 am

Mon October 1, 2012

High Court Preps For Another Headline-Making Term

Credit Alex Brandon / AP

The U.S. Supreme Court is embarking on a new term beginning Monday that could be as consequential as the last one, with the prospect of major rulings on affirmative action, gay marriage and voting rights.

By Nina Totenberg

Originally published on Mon October 1, 2012 7:30 am

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It would be hard to beat last June's cataclysmic, cacophonous end of the Supreme Court term and the decision upholding the Obama health care law. But while all the media focus is on the upcoming elections, the U.S. Supreme Court is about to begin yet another headline-making term, with decisions expected on affirmative action in higher education, same-sex marriage, the Voting Rights Act and a lot of privacy issues.

1:27 am

Mon October 1, 2012

Syrian-American Doctors Head To The Battle Zone

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Credit Deborah Amos / NPR

Local Syrian doctors prepare to treat a patient in a field hospital in Aldana, Syria, near the Turkish border. Each day, local and expatriate doctors take big risks to treat the wounded in rebel-held areas.

Credit Deborah Amos / NPR

Dr. Zaher Sahloul (right) speaks with local staff at a field hospital in Aldana. Sahloul, a pulmonary specialist from Chicago, attended medical school with Syrian President Bashar Assad and is on his fifth medical mission to Syria.

Credit Zaher Sahloul

This 24-year-old Syrian woman from Homs was evacuated through the sewer system — which resulted in badly infected wounds — to a rehabilitation center in southern Turkey. She has had several surgeries to her abdomen and leg; her left arm was amputated.

By Deborah Amos

Originally published on Mon October 1, 2012 6:21 pm

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As Syrian war planes bomb towns and villages held by anti-government rebels, a group of Syrian-American doctors is quietly providing medical aid inside Syria.

The Syrian American Medical Society, or SAMS, has a long track record of supporting health care in Syria.

But as Syria's 18-month revolt has grown more lethal, these Syrian-American doctors have sided with the revolution and undertaken risky work delivering medicines and volunteering in field hospitals.

10:39 pm

Sun September 30, 2012

The CD, At 30, Is Feeling Its Age

By editor

Originally published on Wed October 17, 2012 11:01 am

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Today marks the 30th anniversary of a musical format many of us grew up with: the compact disc. It's been three decades since the first CD went on sale in Japan. The shiny discs came to dominate music industry sales, but their popularity has faded in the digital age they helped unleash. The CD is just the latest musical format to rise and fall in roughly the same 30-year cycle.

Compact discs had been pressed before 1982, but the first CD to officially go on sale was Billy Joel's 52nd Street.

5:11 pm

Sun September 30, 2012

Three-Minute Fiction Round 9 Stories: 'The Interview'

Credit iStockphoto.com

By editor

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The judging process for Round 9 of Three-Minute Fiction is now under way. NPR's Bob Mondello reads an excerpt from one standout story, The Interview, written by Georgia Mierswa. You can read the story in its entirety below, and read more stories at www.npr.org/threeminutefiction.

3:49 pm

Sun September 30, 2012

A Tiny Ocean World With A Mighty Important Future

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Credit M. Ormestad / Tara Oceans

Plankton make up 98 percent of the biomass of ocean life and provide half of the oxygen on the planet. Scientists are working to figure out how climate change may be affecting these important microorganisms.

Credit S. Bollet / Tara Expeditions

The 118-foot research schooner Tara made an around-the-world expedition over 21/2 years. Scientists aboard discovered up to a million new species of plankton. Now begins the work of determining how climate change might be affecting these microorganisms.

By editor

Originally published on Sun September 30, 2012 5:11 pm

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As you take in your next breath of air, you can thank a form of microscopic marine life known as plankton.

They are so small as to be invisible, but taken together, actually dwarf massive creatures like whales. Plankton make up 98 percent of the biomass of ocean life.

"This invisible forest generates half of the oxygen generated on the planet," Chris Bowler, a marine biologist, tells Guy Raz, host of weekends on All Things Considered.

And, as climate change alters the temperature and acidity of our waters, this mysterious ocean world may be in jeopardy.

3:42 pm

Sun September 30, 2012

Online Education Grows Up, And For Now, It's Free

Credit Jeff Chiu / AP

Coursera founders Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller are computer science professors at Stanford University.

By editor

Originally published on Mon October 1, 2012 3:26 pm

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Online education isn't particularly new. It has been around in some form since the 1990s, but what is new is the speed and scale in which online learning is growing.

In barely a year, many of the most prestigious research universities in the world – including Stanford, Caltech, Oxford and Princeton — have started to jump onto the online bandwagon.

2:42 pm

Sun September 30, 2012

Son Jarocho, The Sound Of Veracruz

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Credit Courtesy of the artist

Las Cafeteras, from Los Angeles, have made their own version of the classic son jarocho song "La Bamba."

Credit Courtesy of the artist

By editor

Originally published on Sun September 30, 2012 8:56 pm

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2:40 pm

Sun September 30, 2012

The Man Who Jump-Started Modern Presidential Debate

Credit AP

Vice President Richard Nixon listens as Sen. John F. Kennedy talks during their televised presidential race debate. This photo was made from a television screen in New York, Oct. 21, 1960.

By editor

Originally published on Sun September 30, 2012 5:11 pm

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President Obama and his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, are prepping for Wednesday's presidential debate. It's a well-worn tradition now, but it wasn't always that way.

The 1960 Kennedy-Nixon face-off wasn't just the first televised presidential debate, it was also the first presidential debate in more than a century.

Four years earlier, a young German emigre named Fred Kahn, a student at the University of Maryland, wanted to see whether the nominees — Dwight Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson — might want to engage with students.

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