Journalist Stephen Kinzer to speak at 2019 SRRT Chair's Program

The International Responsibilities Task Force of the American Library Association's (ALA) Social Responsibilities Round Table (SRRT) will present "Subverting Other People's Elections: History and Resources" featuring noted journalist, author, and scholar Stephen Kinzer on Sunday, June 23^rd, from 1:00-2:30 pm in rooms 158A-B in the Walter E. Washington Convention Center during the 2019 ALA Annual Conference & Exhibition in Washington, D.C.

Stephen Kinzer is an award-winning foreign correspondent who has covered more than 50 countries on five continents. Kinzer spent more than 20 years working for the New York Times, most of it as a foreign correspondent. His foreign postings placed him at the center of historic events and, at times, in the line of fire. While covering world events, he has been shot at, jailed, beaten by police, tear-gassed and bombed from the air. From 1983 to 1989, Kinzer was the New York Times bureau chief in Nicaragua, and he covered war and upheaval throughout Central America. From 1990 to 1996, Kinzer was the chief of the New York Times bureau in Berlin. There he covered the transformation of the Eastern European countries and the wars in the former Yugoslavia. From 1996 to 2000, Kinzer headed the newly opened New York Times bureau in Istanbul, Turkey, from where he covered the new nations of Central Asia. His articles and books have led the Washington Post to place him “…among the best in popular foreign policy storytelling.” The Huffington Post wrote “Stephen Kinzer is a journalist of a certain cheeky fearlessness and exquisite timing.”

A few of Kinzer’s books include Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala, with Stephen Schlesinger (1982), All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror (2003); Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq (2006), and The True Flag: Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and the Birth of American Empire (2017).

Kinzer has taught at Northwestern University and Boston University, and is currently a Senior Fellow in International and Public Affairs at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University. He writes for various publications including the Boston Globe, The Guardian, and the New York Review of Books.

For more information on SRRT events at conference, visit the online scheduler at www.alaannual.org.

The ALA Social Responsibilities Round Table (SRRT) is a unit within the American Library Association. It works to make ALA more democratic and to establish progressive priorities not only for the association, but also for the entire profession. Concern for human and economic rights was an important element in the founding of SRRT and remains an urgent concern today. SRRT believes that libraries and librarians must recognize and help solve social problems and inequities to carry out their mandate to work for the common good and bolster democracy.