Boston College History Department and the “Belfast Project”

Our colleagues in the Boston College Department of History have posted the following statement regarding the “Belfast Project”—a set of interviews that has been in the news over the past week.

The “Boston College Case,” as it has come to be known, involves complicated issues regarding the relationship between oral history, legal imperatives, and ethics – not to mention criminal prosecutions and politics. The Oral History Association, which “encourages standards of excellence in the collection, preservation, dissemination and uses of oral testimony,” has issued a thoughtful and informed statement about the case and the important issues it raises.

“Belfast Project” Is Not and Never Was a Boston College History Department Project

Reports of the arrest of Gerry Adams, leader of Sinn Fein, on April 30, 2014 in connection with the murder of Jean McConville repeatedly linked the event to information contained in the Belfast Project, an archive or oral history interviews with members of Nationalist and Loyalist paramilitaries in Northern Ireland. The project was funded by Boston College and is housed in the Burns Library, the special collections library of the university, and portions of it have recently been made available under court order to British authorities.

Press reports refer regularly to the archive as thee project of “BC historians” and “BC professors.” This is fundamentally inaccurate. The interviews that make up the archive were conducted by former members of the paramilitary organizations who were hired by the journalist, Ed Moloney. Nether the interviewers, Anthony McIntyre and Wilson McArthur, nor Mr. Moloney were employed in or by the History Department at Boston College. They were subcontracted to do the job by people acting outside the department and without the involvement of the department.

The subcontracting was done by the Director of the Burns Library, never a member of the History Department, and the Director of the Center for Irish Programs who, while a member of the department, was acting in his own administrative capacity. In fact, most members of the History faculty were unaware of the existence of the project until the publication of Moloney’s book Voices from the Grave in 2010. Successive department chairs had not been informed of the project, nor had they or the department been consulted on the merits of the effort or the appropriate procedures to be followed in carrying out such a fraught and potentially controversial venture.

Robin Fleming (Professor & Chair, 2012–present)
James Cronin (Professor & Chair, 2009–12 & 1991–97)
Marilyn Johnson (Professor & Chair, 2006–2009)
Alan Rogers (Professor & Chair, 2003–2006)
Peter Weiler (Professor Emeritus & Chair, 1997–2003)

This post first appeared on AHA Today.