Over the past several days, the billionaire investor, Bill Ackman, has been succumbing to the perils of social media, launching a series of tweets against Business Insider for alleging that his wife, prominent MIT professor Neri Oxman, plagiarized content in her academic work. As authorities like Business Insider report, Oxman supposedly lifted passages without appropriate attributions, and even directly from Wikipedia.
Amidst this tempest, Ackman also sought opinions from the legal community about filing a defamation suit. Assuming he consults an experienced attorney, they might advise him to step away from the keyboard. His relentless tweeting is only exacerbating the issue, which started last month when he began his crusade against Harvard president Claudine Gay.
His criticisms of Gay connect through his wife’s plagiarism controversy. Ackman had accused Gay of plagiarism, and when she stepped down, critics began to question if there was similar misconduct by Oxman. Although accusations were significantly far-fetched for Gay, parallels drawn between the two situations have intensified scrutiny on Oxman’s academic work, garnering more unwelcome attention for Ackman.
Amidst his haphazard defense, Ackman shared a document comparing passages hacked from Wikipedia to Oxman’s dissertation, raising eyebrows about the breach of academic ethic codes.
Steering into the skid, Ackman attempted to downplay the significance of his wife’s alleged plagiarism and argued that she sourced definitions from Wikipedia and not ideas. He expressed his outrage over his perceived defamation by Business Insider, but his deflection seems more inclined to harm than help his case.
Barely moving the needle in his favor, Ackman requested legal opinions on proving “prima facie defamation”. However academia would likely consider Oxman a public figure, in light of her prominence, making it challenging to establish actual malice in defamation claims. In response to Ackman’s numerous tweets, many on social media advised him to seek proper legal counsel before making further public statements.
For a man who can afford the best legal advice, his choice to crowdsource his legal defense is questionable at best. Seeking public support might appeal to his convictions, but it’s far from the tactical approach a seasoned defamation lawyer would recommend. The potential backlash from these social media tirades could include inadvertent admissions which may undermine any future legal case.
Amidst the storm Ackman has whipped up, the key counsel any attorney should provide is to step back from the proverbial Twitter microphone. His tweets are inadvertently associating Oxman with plagiarism accusations, a result quite opposite of his intended defense. Stepping aside and allowing professional legal counsel to handle the matter would serve him and his wife better in the long run.
Getting legal advice is not just about understanding legal implications, but also about managing delicate situations like these. To stop making his wife infamous for the wrong reasons would certainly be a wise move for Ackman, and many in the legal community wait to see if he will heed such advice.