Judy Dushku

She remarried, to Jim Coleman, in 1991, and they continued to live in Watertown, Massachusetts. Coleman, with four children also, and a non-Mormon, nonetheless joined her local LDS ward. They both worked for Suffolk University, including in Dakar. Retiring from the role of assistant director of the Library, Coleman continued to work with the Gulu NGO. He died in Watertown, October 31, 2013.

In 2010 Dushku was awarded the Eve Award by the Mormon Women's Forum.

While in Dakar, Dushku met a number of surviving child soldiers, child brides and refugees from countries which had encountered severe disruption. After a study trip to Uganda in 2009 she founded, along with her husband and daughter, a charity in Gulu, in Northern Uganda, not far from the border with Sudan, which had been severely impacted by the Lord's Resistance Army. Initially Tharce-Gulu (Trauma Healing and Reflecting Center - Gulu), the non-governmental organization was later renamed Thrive-Gulu, and it works on rehabilitation, literacy for both adults and young people, and empowerment, rights and leadership training. It also helped build a women's bakery in the city, and some of its supporters sell craft goods from Gulu in the US. Dushku, whose project was backed by the Boston stake president, has also stated that she collaborates with the LDS Church in Gulu, and that the project was supported by "participants from the LDS network ... and ... others from various regions, religions and professions." The project has also received funding from international aid agencies of countries including Ireland and Norway, and NGOs such as Save the Children.

Suffolk University appointed Dushku as Dean of their Dakar, Senegal campus from 2001 to 2003. This campus, with students from 20 countries, had operated since the 1980s.

She took part in the third and fourth UN conferences on women, in Nairobi in 1985 and Beijing in 1995. She also led study trips to more than twenty countries, often in transitional situations, including Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Nicaragua.

In 1974, Dushku was one of the founders of Exponent II, a women's journal published by, and largely for, Mormon women, and inspired by the early Woman's Exponent published by members of the Relief Society from 1872 to 1914. Dushku featured on the masthead from the first issue and for many years she ran the Sisters Speak column, where readers could write in about personal issues. She remained involved with the magazine for decades, including two terms as president, as it addressed a wide range of issues, including feminism in general and in a Mormon context, marriage, reproductive rights, as well as anti-war movements and other concerns from a feminine perspective. The Exponent II group, including Dushku, also ran a series of classes on the role of women in the LDS Church. She also wrote a 40-year retrospective on the magazine and how it was organized.

Rasmussen married Philip Dushku, a Boston-area school teacher and administrator of first-generation Albanian heritage, in 1969. They had three sons, including Nate Dushku, and a daughter, the youngest child, actress Eliza Dushku. They divorced during the 1980 pregnancy, but he was involved with the family growing up; he died in 2018.

Rasmussen pursued a Bachelor of Arts at Brigham Young University, where she joined the Young Republicans and planned a State Department career. She graduated with a BA in Political Science in 1964. With encouragement from her BYU teachers, she applied for and won a scholarship to the flagship M.A. in Law and Diplomacy at the international affairs graduate division of Tufts University, the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, graduating in 1966.

Judith Ann Rasmussen Dushku (born 30 March 1942) is an American academic political scientist, journalist, writer and humanitarian. An active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and well known as a Mormon feminist, Dushku cofounded the Mormon women's journal Exponent II, was the Relief Society president for the Boston stake of the LDS Church, became lead founder of a humanitarian agency in Uganda, and is a professor of government at Suffolk University (Boston, Massachusetts), specializing in comparative politics and the interaction of policy and gender since the 1970s. Dushku has been dean of a satellite campus, has won two major awards at Suffolk, and has been a Fulbright Senior Specialist. Dushku was extensively quoted by Mitt Romney when he was running for a US presidential candidacy. Her daughter, Eliza Dushku, is a successful television and film actress.

Judith Ann Rasmussen was born 30 March 1942 just outside Rexburg, Idaho, US, one of the three daughters of Barbara Porter Hegsted (1917–2008) and Richard Rasmussen (1918–2006). Her father joined the US Navy, and was later director of the National Civil Defense Staff College, as well as an active Mormon leader. Dushku grew up in multiple US locations, as a self-described "military brat," and completed high school in Michigan. She had two sisters, one of whom died in 1990.