This Court is reluctant to recognize petitioner's asserted privilege where it appears that Congress, in expressly extending Title VII's coverage to educational institutions in 1972 and in thereafter continuing to afford the EEOC a broad right of access to any evidence "relevant" to a charge under investigation, balanced the substantial costs of invidious discrimination in institutions of higher learning against the importance of academic autonomy, but did not see fit to create a privilege for peer review documents. (a) The claimed privilege cannot be grounded in the common law under Federal Rule of Evidence 501. Held: A university does not enjoy a special privilege requiring a judicial finding of particularized necessity of access, beyond a showing of mere relevance, before peer review materials pertinent to charges of discrimination in tenure decisions are disclosed to the EEOC. The Court of Appeals affirmed, rejecting petitioner's claim that policy considerations and First Amendment principles of academic freedom required the recognition of a qualified privilege or the adoption of a balancing approach that would require the EEOC to demonstrate some particularized need, beyond a showing of relevance, to obtain peer review materials. Petitioner refused to produce a number of the tenure file documents and applied to the EEOC for modification of the subpoena to exclude what it termed "confidential peer review information." The EEOC denied the application and successfully sought enforcement of the subpoena by the District Court. In the course of its investigation, the EEOC issued a subpoena seeking, inter alia, Tung's tenure-review file and the tenure files of five male faculty members identified in the charge as having received more favorable treatment than Tung. After petitioner university denied tenure to associate professor Rosalie Tung, she filed a charge with respondent Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) alleging discrimination on the basis of race, sex, and national origin in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
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