January 5, 2012

Boston College Case Shows Weakness of Researchers' Confidentiality Pledges

Boston College Conflict Shows Vulnerability of Researchers' Confidentiality Pledges 1

Rushlight Magazine

A judge has ordered Boston College to relinquish its oral-history interviews with Dolours Price, a former member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army.

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close Boston College Conflict Shows Vulnerability of Researchers' Confidentiality Pledges 1

Rushlight Magazine

A judge has ordered Boston College to relinquish its oral-history interviews with Dolours Price, a former member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army.

By Peter Schmidt

A legal battle over oral-history records housed at Boston College has cast light on just how little legal weight many researchers' pledges of confidentiality to their subjects actually have.

As a federal court weighs whether to let the federal government seize, and hand over to British authorities, the college's records of confidential interviews with participants in the conflict in Northern Ireland, experts on law related to academic freedom are asking not whether the records can be