Barbara Helen Fried (; born 1951) is an American lawyer and

professor emerita ''Emeritus/Emerita'' () is an honorary title granted to someone who retirement, retires from a position of distinction, most commonly an academic faculty position, but is allowed to continue using the previous title, as in "professor emeritus". ...

Stanford Law School Stanford Law School (SLS) is the Law school in the United States, law school of Stanford University, a Private university, private research university near Palo Alto, California. Established in 1893, Stanford Law had an acceptance rate of 6.28% i ...

. She is the mother of

FTX FTX Trading Ltd., trading as FTX (Futures Exchange), is a bankrupt company that formerly operated a cryptocurrency exchange and crypto hedge fund. The exchange was founded in 2019 by Sam Bankman-Fried and Gary Wang and collapsed in 2022 after ...

and

Alameda Research Alameda Research was a cryptocurrency trading firm, co-founded in September 2017 by Sam Bankman-Fried and Tara MacAulay. In November 2022, FTX, Alameda's sister cryptocurrency exchange, experienced a solvency crisis, and both FTX and Alameda ...

co-founder

Sam Bankman-Fried Samuel Benjamin Bankman-Fried (born March 5, 1992), commonly known as SBF, is an American entrepreneur who was convicted of fraud and related crimes in November 2023. Bankman-Fried founded the FTX cryptocurrency exchange and was celebrated as a ...

, convicted on seven counts of

criminal fraud In law, fraud is intentional deception to deprive a victim of a legal right or to gain from a victim unlawfully or unfairly. Fraud can violate civil law (e.g., a fraud victim may sue the fraud perpetrator to avoid the fraud or recover mone ...

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a chief executive or managing director, is the top-ranking corporate officer charged with the management of an organization, usually a company or a nonprofit organization. CEOs find roles in variou ...

of the now-defunct and bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange, alongside other company insiders.

Education

She graduated from

Harvard College Harvard College is the undergraduate education, undergraduate college of Harvard University, a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Part of the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Scienc ...

with a

B.A. A Bachelor of Arts (abbreviated B.A., BA, A.B. or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is the holder of a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the liberal arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree ...

degree ''

magna cum laude Latin honors are a system of Latin phrases used in some colleges and universities to indicate the level of distinction with which an academic degree has been earned. The system is primarily used in the United States. It is also used in some Sout ...

'' in English and American literature in 1977 and an

M.A. A Master of Arts ( or ''Artium Magister''; abbreviated MA or AM) is the holder of a master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is usually contrasted with that of Master of Science. Those admitted to the degree have ...

degree in literature in 1980, as well as a J.D. degree ''magna cum laude'' in 1983 from

Harvard Law School Harvard Law School (HLS) is the law school of Harvard University, a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1817, Harvard Law School is the oldest law school in continuous operation in the United ...

. Fried served from 1983 to 1984 as a judicial

law clerk A law clerk, judicial clerk, or judicial assistant is a person, often a lawyer, who provides direct counsel and assistance to a lawyer or judge by Legal research, researching issues and drafting legal opinions for cases before the court. Judicial ...

for Judge J. Edward Lumbard of the

United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (in case citations, 2d Cir.) is one of the thirteen United States Courts of Appeals. Its territory covers the states of Connecticut, New York (state), New York, and Vermont, and it has ap ...

Career

Fried joined the Stanford Law School Faculty as a tenure-track professor in 1987 after working as an

associate attorney An associate attorney is a lawyer and an employee of a law firm who does not hold an ownership interest as a partner. Types Practicing attorney An associate may be a junior or senior attorney, but normally does not hold an ownership interest in ...

at the law firm

Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP (known as Paul, Weiss) is an American multinational white-shoe law firm headquartered in New York City. Paul, Weiss's core practice areas are in litigation and corporate law. The firm has histori ...

from 1984 to 1987. She has investigated such topics as

contractualism Contractualism is a term in philosophy which refers either to a family of political theories in the social contract tradition (when used in this sense, the term is an umbrella term for all social contract theories that include contractarianism), ...

libertarianism Libertarianism (from ; or from ) is a political philosophy that holds freedom, personal sovereignty, and liberty as primary values. Many libertarians believe that the concept of freedom is in accord with the Non-Aggression Principle, according t ...

, and

utilitarianism In ethical philosophy, utilitarianism is a family of normative ethical theories that prescribe actions that maximize happiness and well-being for the affected individuals. In other words, utilitarian ideas encourage actions that lead to the ...

, and is considered an expert on legal ethics. Fried has written about

effective altruism Effective altruism (EA) is a 21st-century philosophical and social movement that advocates impartially calculating benefits and prioritizing causes to provide the greatest good. It is motivated by "using evidence and reason to figure out how to b ...

and moral philosopher

Peter Singer Peter Albert David Singer (born 6 July 1946) is an Australian moral philosopher who is Emeritus Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. Singer's work specialises in applied ethics, approaching the subject from a secu ...

. She has offered critiques on philosopher

Robert Nozick Robert Nozick (; November 16, 1938 – January 23, 2002) was an American philosopher. He held the Joseph Pellegrino Harvard University Professor, University Professorship at Harvard University,property Property is a system of rights that gives people legal control of valuable things, and also refers to the valuable things themselves. Depending on the nature of the property, an owner of property may have the right to consume, alter, share, re ...

and psychologist

John Money John William Money (8 July 1921 – 7 July 2006) was a New Zealand American psychologist, sexologist and professor at Johns Hopkins University known for his research on human sexual behavior and gender. Money advanced the use of more accur ...

's work on "fetally androgenized girls." Her academic work centers on a branch of ethics known as

consequentialism In moral philosophy, consequentialism is a class of normative, teleological ethical theories that holds that the consequences of one's conduct are the ultimate basis for judgement about the rightness or wrongness of that conduct. Thus, from a ...

, the view that whether an action is right or wrong is determined by its consequences. Fried is an affiliate of the Stanford Center on Poverty & Inequality. Fried retired from teaching in late 2022, which she said was a "long-planned" decision.

Activism

Fried is a co-founder of the political fundraising organization

Mind the Gap "Mind the gap" or sometimes "watch the gap" is an audible or visual warning phrase issued to rail passengers to take caution while crossing the horizontal, and in some cases vertical, spatial gap between the train doorway and the station ...

, which advocates support for Democratic Party candidates and funds get-out-the-vote groups. The organization, described by ''Vox'' in January 2020 as "Silicon Valley's secretive donor group", advises high-profile tech donors, including former

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

CEO

Eric Schmidt Eric Emerson Schmidt (born April 27, 1955) is an American businessman and former computer engineer who was the chief executive officer of Google from 2001 to 2011 and the company's chairman, executive chairman from 2011 to 2015. He also was the ...

and

LinkedIn LinkedIn () is an American business and employment-oriented Social networking service, social network. It was launched on May 5, 2003 by Reid Hoffman and Eric Ly. Since December 2016, LinkedIn has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft. ...

co-founder

Reid Hoffman Reid Garrett Hoffman (born August 5, 1967) is an American internet entrepreneur, venture capitalist, podcaster, and author. Hoffman is the co-founder and former executive chairman of LinkedIn, a business-oriented social network used primarily ...

, on where to direct campaign contributions. In November 2022, Fried resigned from her chairwoman position with Mind the Gap.

Personal life

Fried's partner is Stanford Law School professor Joseph Bankman, whom she met in 1988 while teaching at Stanford. The couple did not marry because they felt it was unfair to gay couples who could not legally marry. She is the mother of

, the convicted founder and former CEO of now-bankrupt crypto exchange

, and his younger brother, Gabe. Fried's sister Linda P. Fried is the Dean of Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. Fried and Joseph Bankman were sued by the team overseeing the FTX bankruptcy in September 2023. The lawsuit alleges they unjustly enriched themselves, receiving a $10million cash gift and a $16.4million beachfront property in The Bahamas.

Works

Academic work

* ''The Progressive Assault on Laissez Faire: Robert Hale and the First Law and Economics Movement'' (2001) * "Left-Libertarianism, Once More: a Rejoinder to Vallentyne, Steiner and Otsuka" (2005) * ''Can Contractualism Save Us from Aggregation?'' (2012) * "The Holmesian Bad Man Flubs His Entrance" (2012) * "What Does Matter? The Case for Killing the Trolley Problem (Or Letting It Die)" (2012) * "Beyond Blame" (2013) * "But Seriously, Folks, What Do People Really Want?" (2013) * "Emotional Empathy Is Not the Culprit" (2014) * "Brief of Interested Law Professors as Amici Curiae Supporting Respondent in Direct Marketing Association v. Brohl" (2014) * "Facing Up To Risk" (2019) * "Anxiety Psychoeducation for Law Students: A Pilot Program" (2019) * ''Facing Up to Scarcity: The Logic and Limits of Nonconsequentialist Thought'' (2020)

Short stories

* "A Note to A. A. Milne (on the occasion of my mother's 88th birthday)" * "The Days are Gods" * "Really" ''Word Riot'' * "House of Pies" (2011, semi-finalist in New Millennium Writings' 2011 Fiction contest) * "Song of Longing" and "Elegy for Daniel" (2012) * "The Half-Life of Nat Glickstein" (2013), ''Subtropics'', Issue 15 (2013 Winter), * "It Goes Without Saying" (2013) ''Bellevue Literary Review'' (Spring 2013, finalist in BLR's 2013 Fiction contest; nominated for Pushcart Prize) * "A Betting Man" (2014, top 25 in Glimmertrain's 2014 Very Short Fiction contest; long listed in Fish Publishing's 2014-15 Short Story Contest) * "The History of Ideas" (2014) * "What Makes That a Joke?" (2014) * "After Henry" (2017) * "What Remains" (2017, Winner of Fish Publishing's 2017 International Short Memoir Contest)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fried, Barbara 1951 births 20th-century American academics 20th-century American lawyers 20th-century American philosophers 20th-century American women academics 20th-century American women lawyers 21st-century American academics 21st-century American lawyers 21st-century American philosophers 21st-century American women academics 21st-century American women lawyers American ethicists American women ethicists 21st-century American Jews American legal scholars American political fundraisers American women legal scholars Consequentialists Harvard College alumni Harvard Law School alumni Living people People from Stanford, California Stanford Law School faculty