James Fox, head of the University of Oregon Special Collections department, told the Register-Guard in an interview published Friday that the administration’s decision to place him on leave and decline to renew his contract were punitive measures for a confidential records release for which he was not solely responsible.
Fox’s attorney Craig Crispin told the Oregonian on Friday that he has filed notice that the archivist may sue the university.
Fox and another archivist, Kira Homo, were put on leave in January after university professor Bill Harbaugh obtained 25,000 pages from the presidential archives and published at least two on his blog. Although Harbaugh published no private information, UO spokeswoman Julie Brown said in a prepared statement that the vast majority of the records released contained sensitive and personal student and faculty information that is confidential by state and federal law. These documents were exempt from disclosure under the state public records law, Brown said.
Archivists are responsible for vetting documents for confidential information. But Fox said that because of the vast amount of information in the archives and a lack of staff, it would take years to release anything if all requested documents were vetted completely.
He spoke to his boss, libraries Dean Adriene Lim, about the archivists’ incapacity to handle the load of information. She took the issue to Johnson Hall administrators but told him she “couldn’t get anybody over there to listen,” Fox said. The Register-Guard said, an outside review in 2013 concluded that “campus records management seems misplaced in the Libraries and likely should be located elsewhere.”
The library’s way of protecting the information has been to have patrons sign a document acknowledging that there may be confidential information in their requested documents. By signing the document, patrons agree not to publish any such information if it is found, Fox said.
When the unvetted presidential archives were transferred to the library, Lim, Homo and a university administrator struck an email agreement that the library would have sole responsibility for vetting the documents, which come from the presidencies from Dave Frohnmayer to Michael Gottfredson. Fox said he had not been aware of the agreement, or that the library had sole responsibility to vet the documents. According to the Register-Guard, he did not find out about these things until after the university had launched an investigation into why the documents had been released.
In January, Harbaugh published a presidential memo that came from among the 25,000 documents he had requested in December. Administration noticed, placed Fox and Homo on leave, and tried to get Harbaugh to return the documents, which he eventually did.
In March, Fox was denied a renewal of contract. Administration maintains that Fox, as head of Special Collections, should have vetted those documents before releasing them.
“Regardless of the Libraries’ infrastructure, however, it is the responsibility of the Head of Special Collections and University Archives to supervise the archives and records management unit, and to ensure that documents containing private and confidential information are properly reviewed and not improperly released,” Brown said. 
Fox has worked at the university for 14 years. His contract will expire on June 30.
Follow Kaylee Tornay on Twitter @ka_tornay