Virtual: Paige Cottingham-Streater, ‘Black Americans and US-Japan Relations’

PART OF THE 2020-21 SPEAKER SERIES, “BLACKNESS IN ASIAN AND MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES”

This session will feature Paige Cottingham-Streater, executive director of the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission, “Black Americans and U.S.-Japan Relations,” and will be moderated by Morgan Pitelka, chair of the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at UNC-Chapel Hill.

Cottingham-Streater directs the work of the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission. The Commission is an independent federal government agency that supports research, education, public affairs and exchange with Japan. Its mission is to support reciprocal people-to-people understanding, and promote partnerships that advance common interests between Japan and the United States. Prior to joining the Commission, Cottingham-Streater served as deputy executive director of the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation where she worked for sixteen years.  In addition to providing strategic leadership for the Mansfield Foundation, she directed the Mike Mansfield Fellowship Program, a Congressionally-established professional exchange for mid-level federal government employees.

Previously, Cottingham-Streater was director for the U.S.-Japan Project at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington, DC.  In this capacity, she supervised visiting scholars, conducted research on US-Japan issues, managed the project’s budget and published the project’s newsletter.  And prior to that she served as counsel and legislative assistant in the office of Congressman Donald M. Payne (D-NJ), where she monitored legislative initiatives involving education, civil rights law enforcement, labor, and financial and social policy.  She was also a participant in the Japan Exchange and Teaching Program (JET), a staff attorney at the U.S. Department of Treasury, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and a law clerk at U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Marshals Service.

Cottingham-Streater received a Juris Doctor from the National Law Center at George Washington University and a bachelor’s degree from Connecticut College in government and Asian studies.

Register for the session.

This series is organized by the UNC Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies with support from Carolina Asia Center, the UNC Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies, and the UNC Institute of African American Research.