Franklin Odo's academic background was in traditional Asian Studies, but in the late 1960s and early 1970s, he became part of the movement that created Asian American and other ethnic studies in California.

Since then he has taught at the University of Hawai'i and at many other campuses, including a college in Japan as well as the University of Pennsylvania, Hunter College, Princeton, and Columbia University.

Aside from his work as APAP director and curator in cultural history at the Smithsonian, Odo currently teaches a course in the Asian American Studies Program at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Franklin Odo recently published No Sword to Bury: Japanese Americans in Hawai’i During World War II. He is also the editor of the Columbia Documentary History of the Asian American Experience, published in 2003. His previous books include A Pictorial History of the Japanese in Hawai‘i and Roots: An Asian American Reader, co-edited with Amy Tachiki, Eddie Wong, and Buck Wong.