In mid-September, an individual from an I.P. address near George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia School of Law (“ASS Law”) was discovered to have made sweeping edits to the Wikipedia page of one Joshua Wright. Wright, a former FTC Commissioner and professor at ASS Law, is currently involved in a scandal regarding alleged sexual relationships he had with first-year students, widely referred to as “1Ls,” whilst serving in an authoritative role.
Wright had a Title IX complaint lodged against him regarding this issue and he was publicly accused by two senior attorneys from Biglaw, who claimed to have started relationships with him as 1Ls in his class, due to concerns about their respective careers. The accusations have since grown to the point where Wright has chosen to file a defamation suit against the attorneys in question.
The Wikipedia edits in question are particularly controversial as they appear to soften the tone of the allegations made against Wright. Terms like “sexual relationships,” are changed to “flirting”, while references to multiple women accusing Wright are minimized to a lone Title IX complaint. The term “sexual misconduct” is replaced with “hitting on them”, a phrase that significantly downplays the severity of the allegations in the face of Wright’s admission to having sex with the 1Ls involved.
This incident is reminiscent of the recent situation involving Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Bradley, who was caught editing her own Wikipedia entry to spin her controversial comments comparing COVID-19 public health measures to the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.
This chain of events certainly raises questions about the identity of the individual(s) behind these edits, and their relationship with Wright and the ongoing scandal. Even if the physical distance between the IP address responsible for the edits and ASS Law does not conclusively point to Wright or someone on his defense team, the choice and timing of the modifications does draw attention.
You can read the original coverage and find more details about this incident at the Above The Law website.