Boston College is digging in this week and preparing for a legal battle that many believe will be crucial for the future of the study of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.
The Jesuit university has filed a motion in U.S. District Court in Boston to, according to a statement, “quash the subpoena from the U.S. Attorney’s Office as to the release of certain portions of the University’s Oral History Archive on the Troubles in Northern Ireland.
”The archive is stored on campus in the college’s Burns Library but even the building’s sturdy walls may prove vulnerable to a legal assault that began with a request to the U.S. attorney’s office from the Police Service of Northern Ireland.
“We are asking the court to weigh the important competing interests in this matter. Our position is that the premature release of the tapes could threaten the safety of the participants, the enterprise of oral history, and the ongoing peace and reconciliation process in Northern Ireland,” Boston College said.
The university is being supported in its position by, among others, journalist Anthony McIntyre, who was a primary compiler of the oral history project, and New York-based journalist Ed Moloney. Both have submitted supporting affidavits.
The New York Times reported at the outset of the legal standoff that the U.S. attorney’s office in Boston had presented the university with a sealed subpoena apparently intended to obtain evidence linked to murders in Northern Ireland, some of them as far back as four decades ago.
When the story first broke, BC spokesman Jack Dunn said that the university was concerned over the possible ramifications for its oral history project, the safety of those interviewed for the project “and the peace process itself.”
Dunn said that Boston College’s “sole interest” in the process of compiling the archive on the Troubles was “the preservation of the truth and to support peace in Northern Ireland.”
The initial front page Times story was written by Pulitzer Prize winner Jim Dwyer.
Wrote Dwyer in his report: “The subpoena is the first indication that a criminal investigation is under way into the disappearance of at least nine people in Northern Ireland during the early 1970s who were thought to have informed for British authorities about the activities of republicans who were working to end British rule.
“It is also the first attempt by the authorities in Northern Ireland to use the Boston College oral history collection to build criminal cases, a development that has alarmed archivists.”
Boston College is a private Jesuit-founded Catholic university, one of the highest ranked academic institutions in the U.S. and the repository, at the Burns Library, of a wide ranging Irish archive that extends well beyond the Troubles into the arts and literature.
“Boston College will reserve further comment until the matter is resolved by the court,” the university said this week.
