Journalist Maria Hinojosa to deliver Eleanor Roosevelt Lecture on Sept. 17
Series was created to honor Roosevelt, who served as a university trustee, for her commitment to social justice
Maria Hinojosa
Award-winning journalist and author Maria Hinojosa, the managing editor and host of National Public Radio’s Latino USA program, will deliver the Sixth Annual Eleanor Roosevelt Lecture at 4:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 17, in Rapaporte Treasure Hall, Goldfarb Library.
The Mexico City native, who describes herself as a Mexican feminist and an activist journalist, is widely recognized as one of the most influential Latinos in the country. She is also senior correspondent for the Emmy-winning PBS newsmagazine “NOW."
The Roosevelt Lecture Series was created in 2004 to honor Eleanor Roosevelt’s commitment to social justice and her important place in women’s history. Roosevelt was First Lady during the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
She served on the Brandeis University Board of Trustees from 1949 until her death in 1962 and was a visiting lecturer on international relations from 1959 to 1962. She gave the university’s first commencement address, in 1952, and received an honorary doctorate in Humane Letters from Brandeis in 1954.
The lecture is sponsored by the Women’s and Gender Studies Program, and cosponsored by Office of the Dean of Arts and Sciences, AHORA!, the Journalism Program, the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism, and the Departments of American Studies, Hispanic Studies, Latin American and Latino Studies and Sociology.
Before joining NOW, Hinojosa was urban affairs correspondent for CNN. Prior to joining CNN, Hinojosa spent six years as a New York-based correspondent for NPR. During this time, she also hosted Visiones, a public affairs talk show on WNBC-TV in New York.
She also has worked for New York Hotline, a live, primetime public affairs call-in show, and for WNYC Radio as a general assignment correspondent.
In 1995, Hinojosa received the Robert F. Kennedy Award for "Manhood Behind Bars," a story for NPR on how jail has become a right of passage for men of all races. In 1993, she received both the National Association of Hispanic Journalists Radio Award and the New York Society of Professional Journalists Deadline Award for her NPR report, "Kids and Guns."
In addition, Hinojosa authored the book “Crews: Gang Members Talk with Maria Hinojosa”(1995), based on the award-winning NPR report. Her second book, “Raising Raul: Adventures Raising Myself and My Son,” a memoir about raising a Latino child in a multicultural society, was published by in 2000.
Hinojosa was named one of the 25 "Most Influential Working Mothers" in 1999 by Working Mothers Magazine. She was a contributing essayist in the 2004 book “Borderline Personalities: A New Generation of Latinas dish on Sex, Sass and Cultural Shifting,” edited by Robyn Moreno and Michelle Herrera Mulligan. Most recently, she contributed an essay to the 2006 book “Why I Stay Married.”
