When Did RFK Jr. Graduate from UVA Law?
If you're around my age,[1] you were in middle or high school when Wikipedia took off in popularity. You could go to the computer lab during study hall and, with the click of a button, access “a free online encyclopedia that anyone can edit[.]”[2] Looking back, I can’t imagine how anyone did schoolwork without it. The research that used to take our parents and teachers weeks to conduct, we could do in a matter of minutes.
But my teachers hated Wikipedia more than students chewing gum in class or porting 1993’s arena shooter Doom onto the school’s computers.[3] Our teachers scolded us: "Don't trust Wikipedia! Because anyone can edit it, it’s unreliable.” Instead, they encouraged us to “do our own research,” through books and reputable encyclopedias, like the Encyclopedia Brittanica.
That begs the question: Is the Encyclopedia Brittanica actually more accurate than Wikipedia? Is Wikipedia’s reliance on the collective wisdom of the internet more reliable than the specialized knowledge of Encyclopedia Brittanica’s army of paid fact checkers? How do we prove anything? What is the truth?
I faced these questions last week when I mentioned U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (RFK Jr.). Famously, RFK Jr. is a graduate of this Law School. His Wikipedia page states that he graduated from UVA Law in 1982.[4] His Encyclopedia Brittanica page says he graduated in…1981.[5] Here we have a direct contradiction between Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Brittanica. A perfect opportunity to compare the two.
Now there are three ways to fact check RFK Jr.’s graduation year: (1) walk down the hall, knock on Dean Dugas’s door, and ask him when RFK Jr. graduated; (2) use my extensive private investigative skills to dig into why Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Brittanica list different dates; or (3) ask the man himself. Only one option doesn’t involve making small talk.
I began with Wikipedia because fact checking was straightforward: Wikipedia provides a citation to its claim that RFK Jr. graduated in 1982. It cites to a 1983 Time magazine article that states “In 1982, in quick succession, [RFK Jr.] was married [and] graduated from the University of Virginia Law School[.]”[6] Pretty straightforward, but what if Time is wrong? What does UVA say? Per a UVA Today article, RFK Jr. is “a 1982 graduate of the UVA School of Law[.]”[7]
This convinced me that he graduated in 1982, but left open the question: why did Encyclopedia Brittanica list a 1981 graduation date? Turning to Encyclopedia Brittanica, I realized I couldn’t fact check them as easily as Wikipedia because they do not provide reference links to every one of their claims. I then searched Google, using the Boolean search string: "RFK Jr" "UVA" "1981".[8] I found only one source listing a graduation date of 1981, from BestColleges.com.[9] But did Encyclopedia Brittanica pull this information from BestColleges, or did BestColleges pull this information from Encyclopedia Brittanica? Maybe both pulled from an unknown third source?
RFK Jr. is an attorney, so I next turned to the New York State Unified Court System, which maintains his bar registration records.[10] Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Registration No. 1999994, was admitted on May 28, 1985, and graduated from UVA Law. But his bar record didn’t list his graduation year. It did include the name of his law firm: Kennedy & Madonna, LLP. Perhaps his website would list his graduation year, maybe in an “About Me” or “Biographical Information” section.
I clicked on the website for his law firm only to discover that his firm closed and the webpage no longer exists.[11] But this is the internet, nothing is truly gone. The Internet Archive is a non-profit that maintains a digital archive of past and present webpages, called the Wayback Machine.[12] In essence, the Wayback Machine allows you to “go back in time” and see how a website looked in the past. Perfect for researching a webpage that is no longer available.
The Wayback Machine contains 22 screen captures of RFK Jr.’s firm’s website from December 2017 until August 2023.[13] I found a January 2020 copy of the firm’s “About” page which listed a biographical profile on him. Sadly, he did not list his graduation year from UVA Law, but I did learn that he is a “licensed master falconer.”
While I now know what I want to blow my first year associate bonus on, I still do not definitively know what year Robert F. Kennedy Jr. graduated from UVA Law. So I called him (I have a nasty habit of calling random phone numbers I find online; I just can’t resist knowing if they actually work). To my utter surprise, RFK Jr. picked up. The Secretary was very generous with his time and confirmed that he probably graduated in 1982. So I guess the winner is: Wikipedia.
[1] Please don’t ask.
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About.
[3] Guilty as charged.
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_F._Kennedy_Jr.
[5] https://www.britannica.com/biography/Robert-F-Kennedy-Jr.
[6] Crash Landing For Bobby, Time (Sept. 26, 1983), https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,949812,00.html.
[7] Bryan McKenzie, $7 Million Ad Does Its Job: Attracting Attention to Kennedy Campaign, UVA Today (Feb. 14, 2024),
https://news.virginia.edu/content/7-million-ad-does-its-job-attracting-attention-kennedy-campaign
[8] This tells Google to only show results containing the terms RFK Jr., UVA, and 1981.
[9] Evan Castillo, Where Did Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Go to College? BestColleges.com (Oct. 24, 2023), https://www.bestcolleges.com/news/where-robert-kennedy-jr-go-college/.
[10] https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/attorneyservices/search?4.
[11] https://www.kennedymadonna.com.
[12] https://web.archive.org/.
[13] https://web.archive.org/web/20200124104121/http://www.kennedymadonna.com/about.
