A Look at the Ethical, Legal, and Moral Issues Arising from the Boston College Belfast Oral Project

What is it about?

The Boston College Belfast Oral Project - This paper explores the ethical, legal, and moral Issues arising from the Boston College Belfast Oral Project initiated in 2001 across scholarly and non-scholarly sources. The researchers of the project entered into an understanding of confidentiality with the college for the project and the participants (IRA and Unionists). Their goal was to document the experiences of both sides of the members of the ‘troubles’ in Northern Ireland. However, an international subpoena request was served between the UK to the US government in 2011 requesting the project records. In this paper, I will discuss the ethical, legal, and moral issues arising from the Boston College Belfast Project and frame them within central ethical themes of privacy, accuracy, property, and accessibility to the project.

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Why is it important?

Although a relatively new case, I will show that the impact of the Boston College Belfast Project has real world current legal and ethical ramifications to the fields of ethics, library science, archives, oral history, journalism, and academic research. Future research is needed regarding the unresolved ethical, legal, and moral issues arising from the Belfast project and what lessons can be learned for future academics and their professions from this ongoing case. I will show support in the literature that it is a very relevant case that highlights the worrying gap between the ethics-first approach from the researchers versus the legal-minded approach from the government. Keywords: information ethics, information science, oral history, Boston Belfast Project