State Sen. Doug Mastriano is in a legal feud with a student who claimed his WWI book is based on fraud

State Sen. Doug Mastriano, the firebrand Republican who was outside the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and lost the 2022 gubernatorial race to Josh Shapiro, is suing a graduate student from Oklahoma, a Canadian university, and more than a dozen historians, alleging a conspiracy to tarnish his academic reputation that cost him at least $10 million.

The federal lawsuit was filed in Oklahoma in May against James Gregory, a history graduate student who in 2022 reported more than 200 alleged inaccuracies in Mastriano’s doctoral dissertation to the state senator’s alma mater, the University of New Brunswick in Canada, and the University of Kentucky Press, the publisher of Mastriano’s book about a World War I hero. Gregory’s attorneys filed a motion this week seeking the suit’s dismissal.

Mastriano wrote a 2013 doctoral dissertation about Sgt. Alvin York and his success in defeating the German army at the Battle of Argonne Forest, in France, in 1918, considered one of the most significant American engagements in ending WWI. The story was the inspiration for the 1941 Oscar-winning movie, Sergeant York.

Gregory’s own scholarship casts doubt about the narrative that York single-handedly halted a German offensive, and argues that the history books neglect to credit 16 other soldiers who were part of the battle. In conducting his research, the University of Oklahoma student came across Mastriano’s book and said he found multiple instances that he characterized as “academic fraud.”

In the lawsuit, Mastriano alleges that Gregory’s complaints to the university and publisher are fraudulent and part of a conspiracy to defame, economically harm, and strip him of his academic credentials that amount to a “multiyear racketeering and antitrust enterprise.”

In addition to the academic integrity complaints that Gregory filed, the complaint claims that the University of New Brunswick and its history faculty were part of the effort against him.

Mastriano’s dissertation was embargoed, a common practice to allow academics time to use the material to publish a book. But in July 2022, months before the gubernatorial election in which he was the Republican nominee, the university released the 2013 dissertation and broke the embargo that Mastriano requested last until 2030.

In a July 2022 letter, the university informed Mastriano that university policies guarantee an embargo for four years, according to court records.

» READ MORE: Amid campaign, Mastriano's disputed dissertation made public (from 2022)

Less than a year later, in April 2023, more than a dozen history faculty members from Mastriano’s alma matter disseminated a letter saying his public statements, “reflect an anti-2SLGBTQQIA+, Islamophobic, antisemitic, sexist, racist, anti-science, violently authoritarian ideology antithetical to our values.”

Taken together, this alleged conspiracy against him has cost Mastriano at least $10 million in events, book, television, and other media deals, the lawsuit states.

“Defendants embarked on a racketeering enterprise to deprive Col. Mastriano of his intangible property interests in his PhD, his books, and his speaking engagement,” the lawsuit asserts.

Neither Mastriano nor his lawyer replied to a request for comment, nor did the University of New Brunswick.

Gregory told The Inquirer that he had an ethical responsibility as an academic to report the alleged issues he found in Mastriano’s work.

“I had no interest or care in Pennsylvania politics,” Gregory said. “This is purely academic.”

The graduate student is represented pro bono by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, or FIRE, a Philadelphia-based legal and advocacy free speech organization. His lawyers filed this week a motion to dismiss the case, calling the lawsuit a “strategic lawsuit against public participation” that’s intended to silence a critique.

Researchers criticizing one another is the essence of a competitive market in academia, not the antitrust enterprise Mastriano claimed, said FIRE attorney Greg Greubel, who represents Gregory.

“Academics should be subject to peer review, not judicial review,” Greubel said.