2025 Jamison Lecture

Jodi Kantor

Jodi Kantor is a best-selling author and prize-winning investigative reporter whose work reveals hidden truths about power, law, gender, technology and culture.

For the past two years, she has been working to shed light on one of our most critical, powerful and least-understood institutions: the Supreme Court. Together with her New York Times colleagues, Kantor revealed the behind-the-scenes story of how the justices overturned the constitutional right to abortion, problems with the investigation into the leak of that opinion and a secret influence effort by anti-abortion activists and another alleged breach. In the spring of 2024, Kantor broke the news of two provocative flags, associated with efforts to overturn the 2020 election, displayed at the homes of Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. Her work raised widespread public concern and renewed calls from lawmakers to address ethical standards at the court.

In 2017, Kantor and Megan Twohey broke the story of decades of sexual abuse allegations against the Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. Their work helped shift the culture, protect women around the world and spur a chain of truth-telling that continues to this day. Together with a team of colleagues who exposed harassment across industries, they were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for public service, journalism’s highest award.

Kantor and Twohey wrote She Said, about the Weinstein investigation. The book was called “an instant classic of investigative journalism” by the Washington Post and one of the best books of the year by the New York Public Library, NPR, The New York Times, Time, and many other publications. “Watching Kantor and Twohey pursue their goal while guarding each other’s back is as exhilarating as watching Megan Rapinoe and Crystal Dunn on the pitch,” Susan Faludi wrote.

Krys Boyd

Krys Boyd began her career along the U.S.-Mexico border, working simultaneously at radio and television stations as a reporter, anchor and news director. A graduate of TCU, Boyd returned to North Texas in 1999 to serve as news director for Broadcast.com, and later senior producer of Broadcast News at Yahoo.
 
Boyd joined KERA in 2001, hosting the nightly radio talk show Conversations. Later, she wrote and produced documentary and educational television programs, including the critically-acclaimed, nationally-broadcast JFK: Breaking the News in 2003, and served as producer and co-host of the Emmy Award-winning public affairs program On the Record. Think was named “Best Radio Talk Show” of Dallas by the Dallas Observer in 2009, and Boyd was declared “Best Broadcaster for Radio in Dallas” by D Magazine in 2010, and won the PRNDI award for best call-in program in 2012. Boyd  and her husband, Matt, live in Dallas and have four children.

Praise for She Said

“A binge-read of a book, propelled, for the most part, by a clear, adrenaline-spiking ticktock of how their stories came together, and studded with all manner of new astonishing details...This is Kantor and Twohey’s story and one everyone should read for a panoply of reasons. By simply recounting their reporting, the two offer a masterful explanation of how a man like Weinstein is allowed to abuse his power and many women for so long in something approaching plain sight…In many ways, She Said is more significant than All the President’s Men, and not just because journalism is currently under siege, financially and politically, in a way it was not in the 1970s. There was a finite number of people responsible for the crimes of the Nixon administration; the alleged crimes of Harvey Weinstein are also the crimes of our culture, and they continue to be committed every day by many men all around the world. Although now, one hopes, without as much silence, secrecy and cultural complacency.” —Los Angeles Times Review

“She Said, a new book detailing the astonishing behind-the-scenes of the New York Times’s bombshell Harvey Weinstein exposé, is an instant classic of investigative journalism. If your jaw dropped at the newspaper’s original allegations against the predatory movie mogul, prepare for it to hit the floor as authors Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey recount how they uncovered the story: secret meetings, harrowing phone calls, private text exchanges with A-list actresses agonizing over whether to go on the record. Ashley Judd plays the stoic warrior; Gwyneth Paltrow, the circumspect liaison who tries to help the reporters find other sources.” —Monica Hesse, The Washington Post

“She Said, the journalists’ clear-eyed record of that effort, reads at some moments as a thriller, and at others as an indictment of a system full of rot. But it is ultimately about the women, bonded in their pain, who refused to be silent any longer.” —The Atlantic

“She Said, a chronicle of the #MeToo era by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, reveals the power of women who, together, refused to stay silent.” —The New Republic

“Kantor and Twohey even-handedly assess the impact of the #MeToo movement thus far while also turning a perceptive, hopeful eye on the way forward.” —Esquire

“She Said is riveting and, crafted by two of the country's most talented journalists, a vibrant, cinematic read.” —CNN

“Kantor and Twohey have crafted their news dispatches into a seamless and suspenseful account of their reportorial journey, a gripping blow-by-blow of how they managed, “working in the blank spaces between the words,” to corroborate allegations that had been chased and abandoned by multiple journalists before them. . . Watching Kantor and Twohey pursue their goal while guarding each other’s back is as exhilarating as watching Megan Rapinoe and Crystal Dunn on the pitch. . . It turns out we did need to hear more about Weinstein — and the “more” that Kantor and Twohey give us draws an important distinction between the trendy ethic of hashtag justice and the disciplined professionalism and institutional heft that actually got the job done.” —Susan Faludi, New York Times Book Review

“She Said is first and foremost an account of incredible reporting, the kind that takes time, diligence and the kind of institutional support many newspapers can no longer afford. For journalist readers, it is a chance to watch experts at work. And this book is a rare view for nonjournalists into the exacting and rigorous process of quality reporting, and it acts as an implicit counterargument to rising, ambient skepticism of the press. Kantor and Twohey show the background research they ran on sources, to protect both them and the paper, the careful way they documented and substantiated information, and their extraordinary precision in acquiring proof. . . Deeply suspenseful, a kind of less swaggering All the President's Men.”—NPR

The Jamison Lecture is part of the Paup Lecture Series.