Judy Mayotte

Dr. Judy Mayotte "is a professor in the Department of Theology at Marquette University and serves on the Desmond Tutu Peace Foundation Board and Operating Committee, in connection with the Desmond Tutu Peace Centre and Leadership Academy in Cape Town, South Africa. She also serves on the board of the Visionaries Institute of Suffolk University. She was formerly Professor and Women’s Chair in Humanistic Studies at Marquette University. She has also taught on the faculty of Seattle University and in Johns Hopkins University’s Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. In 1994 she was appointed by the first Clinton Administration to the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration as Special Adviser on refugee issues and policy. Before joining the State Department, she was Chairwoman of the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children, and served on the board of Refugees International. She was a member of the Executive Committee of the International Rescue Committee’s board, one of the largest non-sectarian private voluntary organizations in the United States, and a Senior Fellow of the Refugee Policy Group of Washington, D.C.

"Judy Mayotte has written extensive reports, articles and editorial pieces, appeared on radio and television, and lectures on refugee and development issues. She has been called to testify as an expert witness before congressional committees concerned with the status of refugees and the direction of U.S. policy regarding the issue, and she has briefed U.S. Government and United Nations officials. Additionally, she is an award-winning television producer. In 1978 she joined WTTW, Chicago’s public broadcasting station, as the Director of Research for the News and Current Affairs Division. In 1982 she joined Turner Broadcasting as Senior Researcher and a producer for the Emmy and Peabody Award winning documentary series Portrait of America. In 1985 she won an Emmy for writing and producing the “Washington” segment of the series. In 1986 she joined the William Benton Fellowships in Broadcast Journalism at the University of Chicago as Associate Director and in 1988 became Acting Director.

"In 1989 Mayotte received a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to research a book on long-term refugees. Her three year research odyssey took her to the refugee camps of the Cambodians in Thailand and Cambodia, the Eritreans and internally displaced southern Sudanese in Sudan, and the Afghans in Pakistan. Her book Disposable People?: The Plight of Refugees was published in December 1992. Following the book’s publication, Mayotte continued to travel on fact-finding missions among refugees and internally displaced civilians in many of the African, Asian, and Balkan nations caught up in civil conflict and those hosting refugee populations.

"In 1994 for her work among refugees, Mayotte received Refugee Voices annual Mickey Leland Award and Refugees International’s 1994 Award. In 1995 Mayotte received the Marymount Manhattan College Humanitarian Award and Georgetown University’s Learning, Faith, and Freedom Medal. She served as a member of the June 1996 Foreign Policy faculty of the Salzburg Seminar and she was featured in one segment of the thirteen-part PBS television series and book, Visionaries, in her role of refugee advocate for Refugees International." 


 * Director, Global Ethics and Religion Forum