If You’ve Murdered Someone, Don’t Tell an Oral Historian

Christopher Shea blogs for the Wall Street Journal.

Federal prosecutors, at the request of the British government, have told Boston College to hand over records relating to interviews with former members of Protestant and Roman Catholic paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland — part of the college’s Belfast Project.

Researchers had assured the interview subjects that the their identities would remain confidential, but, unfortunately — depending on your perspective — oral historians have no special right to keep information relating to possible crimes secret, observes the Chronicle of Higher Education. There’s a debate about whether the Boston College researchers were informed of this, at the start. But, in any case, three researchers involved in the project said this week that they’d like to see the interviews “either returned or shredded,” if they can’t be protected. Some of the participants in the oral-history project also have asked that the interviews be returned to them....