[1] Leshner received an undergraduate degree with Honors in psychology from Franklin and Marshall College in 1965.

He has also held long-term appointments at the Postgraduate Medical School in Budapest, Hungary, at the Wisconsin Regional Primate Research Center, and as a Fulbright Scholar at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel.

Leshner served as director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) from 1994 to 2001.

AAAS, founded in 1848, is the world's largest, multi-disciplinary scientific and engineering society.

He also has been awarded seven honorary Doctor of Science degrees,[citation needed] including one from Georgetown University in May 2014.