Margo Okazawa-Rey (born 26 November 1949 in Japan), is an American professor emerita, educator, writer, and social justice activist, who is most known as a founding member of the Combahee River Collective, and for her transnational feminist advocacy.[1][2]
Through her research and activism, she explores and shares the interconnections between militarism and globalization of the economy, problems within communities of color in the United States and globally, and fights for the security of women worldwide.[3]
Early life
Okazawa-Rey was born in Kobe, Japan, to an African-American father and a Japanese mother and cites her mixed-race heritage made possible by American occupation of Japan as influencing her work on anti-militarism.[4] At the age of ten, she moved to the United States[5][6]
From 1974 to 1982, Okazawa-Rey worked as social worker in Dorchester and Roxbury, Massachusetts, and co-founded CARE (Campaign for Anti-Racist Education).[9]
Okazawa-Rey held the Jane Watson Irwin Chair at Hamilton College from 1999 to 2001,[12][13] then returned in 2014 to 2016 as the Elihu Root Chair in Women's Studies.[14][15]
From 2002 to 2005, Okazawa-Rey worked as the director of Mills College's Women's Leadership Institute, a position which no longer exists.[16] Along with this, she was a visiting professor teaching social policy and U.S. Women of Color. During this time at Mills College, she proposed the Barbara Lee Distinguished Chair in Women's Leadership in honor of the former congresswoman and alumni Barbara Lee.[3] Okazawa-Rey then returned to Mills College from 2010 to 2011 to take hold of the Barbara Lee Distinguished Chair in Women's Leadership, returning in 2018 to take on the two year position once again.[5][16]
Research, influence, and ideology
As a founding member of the Combahee River Collective in the mid-1970s, it shaped her scholarship and activism and the framework of intersectionality has informed her activism on military violence against women, inter/intra-ethnic conflicts, and critical multicultural education in Boston, Washington, DC, and the San Francisco Bay Area.[17] Furthermore, she co-convened "Women Redefining Security" conferences in Okinawa, Washington, D.C, and Seoul, Korea.[3]
Okazawa-Rey's specific areas of interest are militarism, armed conflict, and violence against women. In her research, she examined the connections between militarism, economic globalization, and impacts on local and migrant women in South Korea who live and work around US military bases.[18]
In 1978, Okazawa-Rey co-authored “A Black Feminist Statement” with the collective.[19]
In 1990, she joined the Advisory board for the Shanti Project in San Francisco along with the board of directors for the Afro-Asian Relations Council of Washington.[citation needed]
In 1994, Okazawa-Rey received a Fulbright Program in South Korea, citing an interest in interminority racism between Korean and African Americans.[5] Given the high tension in the U.S. between Korean immigrant merchants and the African American community, such as the Los Angeles race riots, she planned to research what Korean locals were learning about African Americans living internationally.[16][20] During her time in South Korea, she noted the U.S. military presence along with the generational impact of the Japanese colonization of Korea from 1910 to 1945.[16] She made a connection between the U.S. military to race and gender relations both abroad and domestically. Okazawa-Rey began and spent much of her career exploring both this and the interconnections between militarism and the globalization of the economy.[3][16]
In 1997, she was one of 40 women who cofounded the East-Asia-U.S. Vieques Women's Network Against U.S. Militarism, which became the International Women's Network Against Militarism.[3][21]
She has a long-standing relationship to international social justice work as she sits on the international board of NGO's: PeaceWomen Across the Globe (based in Bern, Switzerland), and Du Re Bang (My Sister's Place, based in Uijongbu, South Korea); after having worked for three years as the Feminist Research Consultant at the Women's Centre for Legal Aid and Counselling in Ramallah, Palestine.[18]
Okazawa-Rey also took part in co-principal investigations with Amina Mama, Rose Mensah-Kutin, and other women over the militarized and post-conflict areas of Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ghana, and Nigeria, where they explored the role of feminist research in activism, policy change, and women's empowerment.[12][18] A related interest was connecting the effects of the military-industrial complex and prison industrial complex have on poor and working-class youth in American communities of color.[18] She is, making connections—both theoretical and practical—between foreign policy and domestic policy.[18]
She has spoken at Yale University, with students and alumni of Brown University, and many others to share the knowledge she has learned through her research.[19][22]
She is the author of numerous publications, including:
“Making Connections: Building the East Asia-US Women's Network” Gwyn Kirk and Margo Okazawa-Rey, 1998. In Women and War Reader, Jennifer Turpin and Lois A. Lorentsen (eds). New York: New York University Press. pp. 308–322.
“Children of GI Town: The invisible legacy of militarized prostitution” Margo Okazawa-Rey, 1997. Asian Journal of Women's Studies, Spring: pp. 71–100.
Women's Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. (6th Ed.) Gwyn Kirk and Margo Okazawa-Rey, 2016. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Activist scholarship: antiracism, feminism, and social change. Julia Sudbury and Margo Okazawa-Rey, 2009. Boulder: Paradigm Publishers.
"Militarism, Conflict, and Women's Activism in the Global Era: Challenges and Prospects for Women in Three West African Contexts" Amina Mama and Margo Okazawa-Rey. Feminist Review (vol. 101:1), July 2012. pp. 97–123
Beyond Heroes and Holidays: A Practical Guide to K-12 Multicultural, Anti-Racist Education and Staff Development. Lee, E., Menkart, D., & Okazawa-Rey, M. (Eds.). 2011.[23]
“No Freedom without Connections: Envisioning Sustainable Feminist Solidarities.” (2018) in Feminist Freedom Warriors: Genealogies, Justice, Politics, and Hope, Chandra Talpade Mohanty and Linda Carty (eds.). New York: Haymarket Press.
Between a Rock and Hard Place: Southeast Asian Women Confront Extractivism, Militarism, and Religious Fundamentalisms (2018). Washington DC: Just Associates.
“Liberal Arts Colleges Partnering with Highlander Research and Education Center: Intergenerational Learning for Student Campus Activism and Personal Transformation,” Feminist Formations Special Issue on Feminist Social Justice Pedagogy (2018).
Gendered Lives: Intersectional Perspectives (7th Edition). Gwyn Kirk and Margo Okazawa-Rey, 2020. Oxford UK/New York: Oxford University Press.
“Nation-izing” Coalition and Solidarity Politics for US Anti-militarist Feminists, Social Justice (2020).
^Mama, Amina; Okazawa-Rey, Margo (2012). "militarism, conflict and women's activism in the global era: challenges and prospects for women in three West African contexts". Feminist Review. 101 (101): 97–123. doi:10.1057/fr.2011.57. ISSN0141-7789. JSTOR41495235. S2CID145427406.
