Jennifer Ludden
Jennifer Ludden helps edit energy and environment stories for NPR's National Desk, working with NPR staffers and a team of public radio reporters across the country. They track the shift to clean energy, state and federal policy moves, and how people and communities are coping with the mounting impacts of climate change.
Previously, Ludden was an NPR correspondent covering family life and social issues, including the changing economics of marriage, the changing role of dads, and the ethical challenges of reproductive technology. She's also covered immigration and national security.
Ludden started reporting with NPR while based overseas in West Africa, Europe and the Middle East. She shared in two awards (Overseas Press Club and Society of Professional Journalists) for NPR's coverage of the Kosovo war in 1999, and won the Robert F. Kennedy Award for her coverage of the overthrow of Mobutu Sese Seko in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. When not navigating war zones, Ludden reported on cultural trends, including the dying tradition of storytellers in Syria, the emergence of Persian pop music in Iran, and the rise of a new form of urban polygamy in Africa.
Ludden has also reported from Canada and at public radio stations in Boston and Maine. She's a graduate of Syracuse University with degrees in television, radio, and film production and in English.
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One year after a group of Somali Bantu settled in Columbia, S.C., the refugees are still learning to adapt to life in America. But, as a new generation is born in the United States, a community is pitching in to help the Bantu integrate. -
Iraqi-American artist Leila Kubba returned to Iraq last year for the first time in 25 years. Her deep impressions from that trip are now recorded in her latest exhibit of paintings. "New Beginnings" is on display at a small gallery in Washington, D.C. Jennifer Ludden joined her on a walking tour.
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The intricacies of accounting fraud can be confusing, if not dull. But not always. New York Times writer Kurt Eichenwald's new book on corporate deceit and betrayal in the Enron scandal, Conspiracy of Fools, is full of riveting detail. He tells Jennifer Ludden about the reporting process.
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Fundraising efforts began this week for the creation of an Embassy of Tribal Nations in Washington, D.C. Host Jennifer Ludden talks with Jacquiline Johnson, the executive director of the National Congress of American Indians, which heads the effort. Johnson says the goal is to have a place for tribal governments to negotiate as a sovereign nation with U.S. and foreign leaders.
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NPR's Jennifer Ludden reports that the state of West Virginia has abandoned plans to erect a monument honoring women veterans, because of objections from some female vets that the proposed statue looked too "masculine." Ludden speaks with one of the female vets, former Marine Dottie Alderman, and sculptor P. Joseph Mullins.
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In the weeks following the U.S. invasion of Iraq, soldiers of the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Field artillery Regiment set up quarters in a war-damaged palace in Baghdad. A former lair of Uday Hussein, the crumbling palace barracks serve as a backdrop to the new documentary, "Gunner Palace."
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As a young nun, Sister Rose Thering worked to reform the Catholic Church and fight anti-Semitism. Her struggles are now the subject of the Oscar-nominated documentary Sister Rose's Passion.
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School funding is the not the only issue troubling U.S. education, according to Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota. Pawlenty says pouring more money into educational reform won't solve all problems. But he acknowledges his state may have to pare back its Medicaid program to pay for education reforms.
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Considered one of the premier industrial designers of the 20th century, 98-year-old Eva Zeisel still designs porcelain in her New York apartment. This month, Crate & Barrel reissued tableware from her 1952 collections. -
When President Bush and Russian president Vladimir Putin met in Slovakia this week, much of the talk was about democracy, and whether Russia was backtracking from democratic reforms. What is the United States doing to promote democracy in Russia and other former Soviet states, such as Kyrgyzstan?
