Why Notes Get Shredded

While Steven Lubet criticizes Alice Goffman for having “shredded all of her field notes,” Northern Ireland’s Public Prosecution Service prosecutes Ivor Bell based on an interview seized by subpoena.

How are those shield laws coming, Josh?

Those Noisy Voices from the Grave

This afternoon I had the pleasure of speaking on the Kojo Nnamdi Show about the Belfast Project (a.k.a. Boston College’s Oral History Archive on the Troubles in Northern Ireland) and its impact on oral history. I didn't have a lot of time, but I tried to make the case for a shield law, analogous to the protections provided to health research and DOJ-sponsored criminal justice research.

[“Old Wounds & Oral History: The Aftermath of the Belfast Project,” Kojo Nnamdi Show, July 7, 2014.]

Belfast Project: No lawyers, few historians (and no IRB)

Discussions of the ill-fated Belfast Project at Boston College often frame the issue as what can happen to an oral history project in the absence of IRB oversight. But a recent account of the project in the Chronicle of Higher Education, as well as subsequent discussion, suggests that the real problem was a lack of involvement by lawyers and historians.

[McMurtrie, Beth. “Secrets From Belfast.” The Chronicle of Higher Education, January 26, 2014.]

First Circuit Denies UK Access to Most Boston College Tapes

The US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit has ruled that Boston College need hand over only 11 of the 85 oral history interviews sought by United Kingdom investigators. The Boston Globe, Chronicle of Higher Education, and Inside Higher Ed see this as mostly a win for Boston College.

[Andersen, Travis. “Major Victory for BC in Court Battle over Belfast Project.” Boston Globe, June 1, 2013.]

More complete coverage can be found at Boston College Subpoena News.

Boston College Oral History Roundup

I rely on the exceptionally thorough Boston College Subpoena News for updates on the efforts of the United Kingdom and United States governments to get access to oral history interviews of participants in Northern Ireland's Troubles, but I feel I should flag three items of special interest to readers of this blog.

Palys and Lowman on Boston College: "Be Suspicious of Universities"

Ted Palys and John Lowman of the School of Criminology at Simon Fraser University provide a helpful overview of the Boston College Belfast Project oral history legal case while condeming Boston College's actions before and after the arrival of the subpoena. Though the article is marred by an incomplete understanding of U.S. human subjects regulations, it makes a strong case that universities need to practice "ethical and legal due diligence" before promising confidentiality to research participants.

[Ted Palys and John Lowman. “Defending Research Confidentiality ‘To the Extent the Law Allows:’ Lessons From the Boston College Subpoenas.” Journal of Academic Ethics 10, no. 4 (2012): 271–297. doi:10.1007/s10805-012-9172-5.]

Is Boston College Still Clueless about Oral History?

H-Oralhist is running a thread of responses to an oral historian who is seeking IRB approval. One response came from Jillian Maxey, a Ph.D. candidate in Comparative Theology at Boston College.

She writes,

I am working through my IRB proposal right now. I am interviewing key scholars in my field and will be identifying them by name in my dissertation. One person to whom I spoke who serves on the IRB balked at this at first. When I insisted that it was necessary she gave me some tips for articulating the need to the IRB. I'm just wondering if anyone has experience with this or knows of any oral history publications that name participants that I could use to backup my proposal.

Can it be that a year and a half into an international legal controversy involving oral history recordings stored at Boston College, its IRB still doesn't know that oral historians identify their narrators by name? If so, that's all the more reason to think that IRB oversight is not the right response to the Boston College case.

First Circuit Rejects Belfast Project Historians' Appeal

On Friday, July 6, the First Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the effort by two oral historians to block the release of interviews of participants in Northern Ireland's Troubles, archived as the Belfast Project at Boston College's Burns Library.

Citing precedent, especially Branzburg v. Hayes, 408 U.S. 665 (1972), the court majority found that "the choice to investigate criminal activity belongs to the government and is not subject to veto by academic researchers."

[In re Request from United Kingdom, Nos. 11-2511, 12-1159, --- F.3d ----, 2012 WL 2628046 (1st Cir. July 06, 2012)]

In a concurrence, Judge Juan Torruella is more sympathetic to the researchers, arguing that academic researchers are entitled to "a degree of protection" and possess "a cognizable interest under the First Amendment." However, he continues, "any such interest has been weighed and measured by the Supreme Court and found insufficient to overcome the government's paramount concerns in the present context."

Berkeley Historian Defends IRB Review of Oral History

Martin Meeker, a historian with the Regional Oral History Office (ROHO) at the University of California, Berkeley, argues that "Historians of the recent past, many of whom use interviews as a source, need to be more systematic about doing oral histories as a form of research [and] that cooperation with IRBs offers one way to do that." What he really means, I think, is that cooperation with IRBs may help historians get legal help from their universities.

[Martin Meeker, "The Berkeley Compromise: Oral History, Human Subjects, and the Meaning of 'Research,'" in Doing Recent History: On Privacy, Copyright, Video Games, Institutional Review Boards, Activist Scholarship, and History That Talks Back, edited by Claire Bond Potter and Renee C. Romano (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2012).]

Judge Demands Boston College Oral Histories

Judge William G. Young has ruled that Boston College must turn over oral history recordings and materials to him so he can decide whether to share them with U.S. prosecutors.

The full ruling and other coverage can be found at Boston College Subpoena News. The Boston Globe also covers the story.

Website Covers Boston College Oral History Subpoena

An anonymous comment on my post, DOJ: "There Is No Academic Privilege", alerts me to Boston College Subpoena News, described as a "website following Boston College's motion to quash the DoJ subpoena." The site does not credit its authors, but it seems to have useful information.

DOJ: "There Is No Academic Privilege"

As reported in Inside Higher Ed, the Department of Justice has filed a brief in the British government's effort to gain access to oral history records at Boston College. The Department asks the court to honor the U.S. attorney's subpoena on the grounds that "there is no academic privilege which shields the material from disclosure."

U.S. and British Governments Subpoena Oral Histories

Last month, the United States Attorney’s office filed a subpoena for two tapes that were recorded as part of the Boston College’s Oral History Archive on the Troubles in Northern Ireland. It did so at the request of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, part of the British Government. As reported by the New York Times, British authorities apparently want the tapes for an investigation into murders and kidnappings committed decades ago.