Boston College may have to violate its promise of confidentiality given to members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) who participated in an oral history project.

 

The school’s Belfast Project recorded about 25 interviews with IRA paramilitaries and promised to release the tapes only after participants were dead. But the British government wants access to the recordings as part of its criminal investigations of IRA members and has asked the U.S. government for help in obtaining them.

 

The Department of Justice began by issuing subpoenas to Boston College for recordings and/or transcripts of interviews with Dolours Price and the late Brendan Hughes. The college turned over the Hughes interviews, but refused to comply with the Price requests because she is still alive. Price served seven years in prison for a 1973 IRA car bombing.

 

After the government took the school to court, a federal judge ruled he would review the interviews to determine whether they should be turned over to British officials. But Judge William Young did reject the college’s request to quash the subpoenas, saying the government had legitimate interests in obtaining the interviews.

-Noel Brinkerhoff, David Wallechinsky

 

Limited Right to Confidentiality (by Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed)

Boston College Must Release Oral-History Records, but Court Will Review Them First (by Jennifer Howard, Chronicle of Higher Education)

Boston College IRA Tapes: Researchers Seek Separate Review (by Brian Fitzpatrick, Emigrant Online)

United States v. Trustees of Boston College (U.S. District Court District of Massachusetts) (pdf)