Mary Joe Frug

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Mary Joe Frug (1941-1991) was a professor at New England School of Law from 1981 to 1991. She is often thought of as the mother of postmodern feminist theory, and was a renowned postmodernist and feminist scholar. Much of her work was collected in the posthumously-published book Postmodern Legal Feminism.

On April 4, 1991 she was murdered on the streets of Cambridge, Massachusetts not far from the home that she shared with her husband, Harvard Law professor Gerald Frug, and their children Stephen and Emily.

In March 1992, the Harvard Law Review published an unfinished draft article by Frug called "A Postmodern Feminist Legal Manifesto,"[1] which explored the legal theories on violence toward women.[2] Some members of the Review were opposed to publishing the piece, and later parodied it in "He-Manifesto of Post-Mortem Legal Feminism," which was included in the Harvard Law Revue, an annual spoof of the Review. It was signed by "Mary Doe, Rigor-Mortis Professor of Law" and argued that Frug's theories were the concoction of paranoid feminists. Co-authors Craig Coben and Ken Fenyo later apologized in a statement, particularly to Frug's husband. They added that they did not mean to distribute the article on the anniversary of her death.[3] The statement was signed by other members of the Review, including the then-Supreme Court editor Paul Clement.[4]

In 1994 the Mary Joe Frug Fund was launched to establish an endowed chair at the New England School of Law in her memory. This chair would be the first of its kind in the nation and would carry on the legacy of Professor Frug by allowing visiting professors to come to the New England School of Law and teach women's issues in the law.