Chris Bray: Boston College Burns the Seed Corn

By AM Sunday, February 26, 2012

Share Tweet Share Share Email

The continuing discussion about Boston College and the federal subpoenas of its Belfast Project material is a discussion about the very thing itself, about the place and nature of academic inquiry. What is a research university? What does it do? What is its purpose, its structure, its premise, its principle?

Here, again, is a paragraph from a Feb. 15 story in The Heights, the student-run newspaper at Boston College:

    On the other hand, Dunn stated that the University made no such promises, and in fact informed Moloney and McIntyre of the risk of subpoena and the danger such a situation could pose to the archives. He admitted that the language "to the extent that American law provides" was not found exactly in the donor agreement, but stated his belief that the contract was drawn up by Moloney, not BC.

Ed Moloney -- a journalist, not on faculty, hired as a contractor to run a research project under BC's aegis -- supposedly wrote the contracts between BC and its research subjects.

http://chrisbrayblog.blogspot.com/2012/02/boston-college-burns-seed-corn.html