SRRT (Social Responsibilities Round Table)

SRRT PROGRAM ASSESSMENT: A CRITIQUE

The SRRT Program Assessment Overview reads less like an "objective" evaluation and more like a managerial framework imposed on SRRT from above, with criteria and thresholds drawn from corporate-style consulting rather than member-driven democratic processes. I'll highlight the key issues in terms of framing, ideology, and impact:

First, the assessment background situates SRRT's work within ALA Forward, a consultant-driven project. The language throughout is technocratic: "effectiveness," "efficiency," "ROI," "sunset or preserve," "impact versus effort." This approach assumes that SRRT's value can be captured by a cost-benefit rubric rather than by its historic role as the conscience of the association, a space for dissent, and a center for justice-oriented initiatives. The framing suggests that what cannot be quantified or monetized is dispensable.

Second, the rubric itself privileges alignment with "current strategic priorities" and "financial sustainability." By design, this marginalizes precisely the kinds of initiatives SRRT has championed: controversial resolutions, statements that challenge ALA leadership or U.S. policy, solidarity with marginalized groups, and projects without immediate financial return. ALA is effectively using its bylaws against SRRT's independent voice by reclassifying SRRT statements as a "gray area" and recommending their elimination. That strips SRRT of one of its most vital tools: the ability to make public, collective political interventions.

Third, the "Pause or Sunset" and "Review for Retention" sections are telling. The Herb Biblo Award is threatened not on grounds of irrelevance, but of financial "sustainability." The Newsletter is described as "high effort with difficult-to-track impact," as if the value of publishing radical perspectives and movement histories could ever be measured by a consultant's ROI chart. Task forces like Hunger, Homelessness & Poverty or International Responsibilities are judged less on what they stand for than on administrative compliance (number of meetings, posted minutes, number of members). The effect is to bureaucratize SRRT out of existence: initiatives with teeth are penalized, and initiatives without quantifiable outputs are deemed expendable.

Fourth, the document carefully stages a contrast between "preserve and invest" (the safe, mission-aligned activities) and "pause or sunset" (the messy, political, underfunded, or dissenting work). This creates a hierarchy of legitimacy within SRRT itself, potentially pitting members and task forces against each other. It also redefines SRRT's mission away from challenging power and toward fitting neatly into ALA's new "strategic plan."

Finally, the closing rhetoric-"Does this work create unity? Build power? Make us stronger?"-is framed as open-ended, but in practice it functions as an invitation to internalize the consultant's framework. "Unity" here seems to mean not solidarity with struggles outside the ALA, but conformity to the Executive Board's vision. The underlying thrust is de-democratization: replacing member initiative with staff- and board-led managerial oversight.

In short, this assessment undermines SRRT's autonomy and its historic role as a dissenting and justice-driven space within ALA. It substitutes financial and bureaucratic criteria for political and ethical ones, reframes SRRT's statements and resolutions as violations rather than vital contributions, and risks silencing the very work that has given SRRT meaning.

Mark Rosenzweig

SRRTAC/International Responsibilities Task Force (IRTF) rep