She was the subject of some controversy in December 2001 when she gave a talk at a public school in Kanagawa Prefecture about Arab culture and food at the invitation of a teacher there; the Israeli embassy in Tokyo sent a complaint to the school, describing her discussion as conveying "blatant, biased political" anti-Israeli sentiments. She then began working as an English teacher in a cram school in Tokyo. Japanese lawyers, scholars, journalists, writers and activists responded by signing a protest petition against the Israeli embassy and government saying that Mei was now a Japanese citizen and had the right to freedom of speech in Japan. Mei later became an anchor on Japanese cable television channel Asahi Newstar's (TV Asahi's news channel) one-hour live political programme News no Shinsō. She is currently MBC's (Middle East Broadcasting Center, the United Arab Emirates' Arabic satellite channel) Tokyo correspondent, reporting in Arabic about Japan. She earned her PhD degree in Media Studies from Doshisha University in 2011, doing research on the development of Arabic media, and the effect of satellite channels (a case study of Al Jazeera) on Arab societies. Mei Shigenobu is a supporter of Palestinian statehood and a critic of Israel. In contrast to Bettina's (Ulrike Meinhof's daughter) disavowal, shown in Children of the Revolution, she views her mother's actions with pride, to the point of stating that she considers her a role model, merely repeating, as her mother, that those were different times, as she mentioned to the Standard, "there were no means of gaining media attention", and with today's media and communication, other venues prove far more effective. Also arguing that her mothers activities should not be viewed through 'contemporary eyes', saying that it was in an era people were fighting against oppression around the world, and that "We forget all that background and we just pick up a person from there and choose to sentence her using today's sensibility, today's values and today's way of thinking.". In popular culture Mei Shigenobu appears in Nobuyuki Oura's November 2006 movie . Mei also appears in , a documentary featuring the life of the Japanese Rock band and its lead singer PANTA. In 2010, Mei costarred in the fictional Japanese movie on figure skating Coach as a sports journalist. In 2010, Mei Shigenobu and her mother Fusako Shigenobu were featured in Shane O'Sullivan's documentary film Children of the Revolution, which premiered