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.
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NPR asks Sen. Jack Reed, top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, why he wants an investigation into whether Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared classified intelligence in a Signal chat. -
Villanova University theology professor and papacy expert Massimo Faggioli breaks down why it's so hard to predict who the next pope will be and what direction he'll take the Catholic Church. -
NPR speaks with Ramzi Kassem, a member of the legal team for Tufts student Rümeysa Öztürk, about her detention and arguments in her immigration hearing. -
El Salvador's president says he will not return wrongly deported man, whistleblower describes DOGE actions at NLRB, Trump administration freezes more than $2.2 billion after Harvard rejects demands.
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The president of El Salvador said during a meeting with President Trump at the White House on Monday that he's not returning a Maryland man wrongfully deported to his country back to the U.S.
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The Trump administration on Monday froze more than $2.2 billion in contracts and multiyear grants for Harvard after the university said it would defy government demands to change certain policies.
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An administrative judge at the federal agency that enforces U.S. workplace anti-discrimination laws explains why she spoke out against a directive to pause all LGBTQ+ cases.
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Morning Edition's First Amendment series looks at the cost of speaking out or staying silent in the scientific community, amid pressure from colleagues or officials in Washington. -
Is academic freedom fading on U.S. campuses? A Republican student group credits Trump's election with expanding their ability to speak out, while others discuss how his policies are reshaping campus life and academic fields. -
An Idaho teacher was told by her principal to take down an "Everyone is welcome here" poster in her classroom. It's a symptom of President Trump's crackdown on discussions of inclusivity in schools.
