“We stand for the things we think our country should stand for — inclusiveness, equality, diversity, joy and love. It sounds corny, but that’s what we stand for.”Kerr does not come by his deep sense of patriotism and love of country lightly. His stance against Trump’s hateful rhetoric against athletes, just as his previous public opposition to the Muslim travel ban, is in part informed by personal tragedy.In 1984, when Kerr was just 18 years old, his father, Malcolm, was killed by Islamic extremists in a terror attack on the American University of Beirut, where Malcolm was president.With that painful part of history, Kerr was clear that Trump’s ban was exactly the wrong thing to do.“I would just say that as someone whose family member was a victim of terrorism, having lost my father, if we’re trying to combat terrorism by banishing people from coming to this country, by really going against the principles of what our country is about and creating fear, it’s the wrong way of going about it,” he said in January.The tragic loss of his father to hate-driven violence informed Kerr’s outspokenness on many thorny topics, from Middle East policy to gun control. Rather than turn him sour on other people, it gave him a broader outlook.It’s crucial to “put yourself in someone else’s shoes and look at it from a bigger perspective,” Kerr said.One person who could benefit mightily from such a worldview would be Trump. And the whole nation would be better off for it.
