The Diederich College of Communication and the O’Brien Fellowship in Public Service Journalism welcome Nicole Dungca; Claire Healy; Andrew Ba Tran, of The Washington Post.

“Revealing the Smithsonian’s Racial Brain Collection"

This year's winner of the Dori Maynard Justice Award will be on hand to give the annual lecture based on their project. The Smithsonian has in storage more than 250 brains collected by a museum anthropologist to further his now-debunked theories about race. The Washington Post spent a year investigating the collection and the Smithsonian’s unreconciled legacy of more than 30,700 body parts, most of which were taken without consent.

The judges called it "exquisite, tenacious reporting and impact, adding this multimedia series was impossible to put down. It’s important, institute-changing storytelling that’s historical and current."

This award celebrates journalism that overcomes ignorance, stereotypes, intolerance, racism, hate, negligence and indifference. Winning entries will bridge any or all of the social fault lines and fissures of race, gender, religion, class, caste, generation, disability, illness, nationality and geography. Sponsored by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, this award is named in memory of Dori J. Maynard who was an ASNE board member and a strong advocate for news and newsroom diversity and journalism that addressed injustices. A longtime journalist, Ms. Maynard was the president of the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, which is dedicated to helping news media accurately portray all segments of society.

Join us for an interactive discussion with the reporters along with time for Q&A from the audience.

 

 

 

 

 

 

About the speakers

Nicole Dungca

Nicole Dungca is a reporter in The Washington Post's investigative unit and the president of the Asian American Journalists Association. In 2023, she and a team of Post colleagues published an investigative series into the Smithsonian Institution's collection of human remains, which included an illustrated narrative that was recognized as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prizes. She was also the co-host of Broken Doors, an investigative podcast that won the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for Radio and was a finalist in the Audio Reporting category of the Pulitzer Prizes. Before The Post, she was part of the Boston Globe's Spotlight Team, where she delved into topics such as racism in Boston, secret criminal hearings in Massachusetts, the state's burgeoning cannabis industry and transportation. Dungca has also covered education at the Oregonian and written for the Times-Picayune and Providence Journal.

 

Claire Healy

Claire Healy is an Esserman Investigative Fellow at The Miami Herald. Prior to her current role, she was a newsroom copy aide at The Washington Post, where she was a 2024 Pulitzer Finalist for "Searching for Maura," an illustrated investigation into a death at the 1904 World's Fair. The story was part of a yearlong investigative series Healy co-authored called "The Collection," which revealed the Smithsonian Institution's collection of human brains and other body parts. The series won the 2024 Dori J. Maynard Justice Award and received a special citation in the 2024 Selden Ring Award for Investigative Reporting. She has written stories for numerous sections at The Washington Post, and has previously written for U.S. News & World Report. 

 

Andrew Ba Tran

Andrew Ba Tran is an investigative data reporter at The Washington Post. Some of the newspapers he’s worked at include The Boston Globe and The South Florida Sun Sentinel. He has worked on stories that have won the Goldsmith and Pulitzer prizes for Investigative Reporting. He is an adjunct professor at American University and has crafted several online courses teaching the statistical language R to journalists. He was a Metpro Fellow and a Chips Quinn Scholar and graduated from the University of Texas.

 

---

About the Burleigh Media Ethics Lecture

The annual Burleigh Media Ethics Lecture addresses topical and moral issues facing the world today. Sponsored annually by the J. William and Mary Diederich College of Communication, the lecture honors William R. Burleigh, a 1957 Marquette journalism graduate, who started working for the Evansville, Ind. Press at age 14 as a sports reporter. He retired in 2000 as president and CEO of the E.W. Scripps Company, having led the transformation of Scripps from primarily a newspaper enterprise into a media company with interest in cable and broadcast television, newspaper publishing, e-commerce, interactive media, licensing and syndication. Burleigh lectures address ethical issues today's communicators report on, as well as those they wrestle with in their own work.