This panel will feature three educator/activists working on the frontlines of peace and justice issues locally and globally, sharing strategies, perspectives and challenges over their decades of organizing. Panelists will discuss pressing issues related to peace, justice and human rights. Key themes will include migration, militarism, occupation, and resistance across contexts. In this conversation, participants will learn about long-term strategies for advancing peace and social justice through transnational movements, as well as the role of education (formal, informal, and non-formal) within them. 

Invited Speakers
Jose Artiga is a long-time human rights advocate in the United States and Central America, and the current executive director of The SHARE FOUNDATION since 1995.  Jose has organized and led delegations to El Salvador and Honduras, including for interfaith leaders and members of Congress.  Jose was one of the first Salvadoran immigrants to seek sanctuary in the US, at the University Lutheran Chapel of the University of California Berkeley, sparking the sanctuary movement in the early 1980s. 

Deborah Lee is the co-executive director of the Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity (IM4HI), a California-based interfaith abolitionist organization dedicated to the dignity and full inclusion of immigrants and people impacted by incarceration. She has worked for over 30 years in popular education, community organizing, and advocacy, connecting issues of race, gender, economic justice, anti-militarism, LGBTQ inclusion, and immigrant rights.  Her work strengthens the voice and role of faith communities in today’s social movements.

Margo Okazawa-Rey, Professor Emerita at San Francisco State University, is an activist and educator working on issues of militarism, armed conflict, and violence against women. She has long-standing feminist commitments in South Korea and Palestine, and is a founding member of the International Women’s Network against Militarism. Dr. Okazawa-Rey is also a founding member of the Combahee River Collective. She hosts Women’s Magazine, a feminist current events program on KPFA Pacifica Radio in Berkeley, California.

Organizers & Moderators
Monisha Bajaj is Professor and Chair of International and Multicultural Education at the University of San Francisco. She has authored eight books and numerous articles on issues of peace, human rights, migration, and education, and is the founding editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Human Rights Education. Dr. Bajaj has developed curriculum and teacher training materials for organizations such as UNICEF and UNESCO, and her first children’s book “A Year of Kites” will be published in 2026.

Amy Argenal is Assistant Teaching Professor of Community-Engaged Research and Learning in the Sociology Department at the University of California Santa Cruz. Amy previously served as the Director of Service Learning at Urban High School in San Francisco, and has taught at the University of San Francisco and at UC Davis. In addition to her work, she engages in immigrant and refugee rights work and partners with local communities in Central America in their struggle to defend land and water.