Leila Fadel
Leila Fadel is a national correspondent for NPR based in Los Angeles, covering issues of culture, diversity, and race.
Most recently, she was NPR's international correspondent based in Cairo and covered the wave of revolts in the Middle East and their aftermaths in Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, and beyond. Her stories brought us to the heart of a state-ordered massacre of pro-Muslim Brotherhood protesters in Cairo in 2013 when police shot into crowds of people to clear them and killed between 1,000 and 2,000 people. She told us the tales of a coup in Egypt and what it is like for a country to go through a military overthrow of an elected government. She covered the fall of Mosul to ISIS in 2014 and documented the harrowing tales of the Yazidi women who were kidnapped and enslaved by the group. Her coverage also included stories of human smugglers in Egypt and the Syrian families desperate and willing to pay to risk their lives and cross a turbulent ocean for Europe.
She was awarded the Lowell Thomas Award from the Overseas Press Club for her coverage of the 2013 coup in Egypt and the toll it took on the country and Egyptian families. In 2017 she earned a Gracie award for the story of a single mother in Tunisia whose two eldest daughters were brainwashed and joined ISIS. The mother was fighting to make sure it didn't happen to her younger girls.
Before joining NPR, she covered the Middle East for The Washington Post as the Cairo Bureau Chief. Prior to her position as Cairo Bureau Chief for the Post, she covered the Iraq war for nearly five years with Knight Ridder, McClatchy Newspapers, and later the Washington Post. Her foreign coverage of the devastating human toll of the Iraq war earned her the George. R. Polk award in 2007. In 2016 she was the Council on Foreign Relations Edward R. Murrow fellow.
Leila Fadel is a Lebanese-American journalist who speaks conversational Arabic and was raised in Saudi Arabia and Lebanon.
-
The University of Virginia's President resigned under pressure from the Trump administration. Leila Fadel asks Professor Brenden Cantwell at Michigan State about the impact on public higher education.
-
NPR's Leila Fadel speaks with Aitor Zabalgogeazkoa, an emergency coordinator with Doctors Without Borders in Gaza, who explains why his organization is calling for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation aid distribution system to be dismantled.
-
Jim Obergefell, plaintiff in the landmark Supreme Court case that legalized gay marriage in all 50 states, reflects on the decision 10 years later and the LGBTQ community's current civil rights fight. -
President Trump announced on social media on Monday that Iran and Israel had agreed to a ceasefire. That's after the U.S. got directly involved over the weekend striking key nuclear sites in Iran.
-
Salvadoran journalist Mario Guevara is currently in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody. The Committee to Protect Journalists warns his case represents an "erosion" of freedom of speech. -
President Trump announced a ceasefire between Israel and Iran on Monday. But despite separate statements from the two countries saying they agreed to a truce, reports persisted of further airstrikes.
-
New York City's Democratic mayoral primary is today. The race is a hotly contested one, with candidates who have vastly different visions for the future of America's largest city.
-
The Trump administration defends its strikes on three nuclear targets in Iran, where the conflict between Israel and Iran stands now, Iran's diplomatic and military options moving forward.
-
After 104 days in a Louisiana immigration detention center, Columbia graduate student Mahmoud Khalil has been released on bail. -
NPR's Leila Fadel speaks with Vali Nasr, professor of Middle East studies at Johns Hopkins University, about his reaction to U.S. strikes in Iran and the effects this could have on the region.
