The story of Ann Kerr’s life up until now is a story of resilience, devotion, and an undying pursuit of mutual understanding and tolerance between people. In May, I had the chance to sit down with Ann to reflect on some of the key experiences and lessons that have defined her remarkable life and career in education.
As a junior at Occidental College in southern California, Ann decided to spend a year studying at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon’s capital. This decision would alter the course of her life and, consequently, the lives of the many people she’s impacted along the way.
When she stepped off the Dutch freighter at the Port of Beirut in 1954, Ann Kerr was immediately confronted with both a sense of wonder and familiarity. Ann describes the “mystical” and “romantic” feeling of seeing the mosques and hearing the call to prayer over Beirut for the first time. “I was so intrigued with Islam, and its manifestations,” she recalls.
However, Ann was also struck by the similarities between this new environment and her home thousands of miles away. “You see the sky is the same, and the trees,” and “the climates of Lebanon and California are similar,” she says nostalgically.
As she continues down this path in her memory, Ann transitions from the setting to the people she encountered upon arriving in Beirut. “People are different but the same, and that’s what’s exciting,” she claims. “There’s a common denominator of humanity.”
Ann lived with four roommates from Palestine, Jerusalem, Lebanon, and Iraq respectively, making their dorm room a microcosm of Beirut’s incredibly diverse population. She quickly learned from her roommates about the eclectic cultural influences of those who grew up in the Arab world. Each of Ann’s roommates had attended Protestant or Catholic founded primary and secondary schools in their respective countries before going to the American University of Beirut. “The Muslim kids all learned to sing the Christian hymns in the Protestant schools, and everything just sort of meshed,” Ann recollects.
In the midst of her adventure at the American University of Beirut, Ann met a fellow American student named Malcolm Kerr. The son of two AUB professors, Malcolm was raised in Beirut and was completing his masters degree in Middle East Studies at the time. The two developed an immediate connection and went on to marry in 1956.
Ann returned to Southern California with a broadened perspective and a profound admiration for the Arab world. Driven by their shared commitment to education, Ann and Malcolm embarked on a decades-long academic journey together.
After Malcolm completed his PhD thesis in 1958, the two returned to Beirut where Malcolm began his first teaching job in the Political Science department at AUB. After three years, and the birth of their first two children, Malcolm and Ann again returned to Southern California where Malcolm began a long teaching career at UCLA. However, their love for the Arab world brought them back to teach and study in the Middle East and North Africa several times over the next two decades.
Malcolm gradually developed a reputation as an acclaimed scholar of the Arab world. In 1965, he published his most well-known book The Arab Cold War while studying in Cairo. During this period, Malcolm was interested in the internal politics of the Arab world and the growing ideology of Arab nationalism. As Ann describes it, “His concern was to dispel the notion of Arab politics as a projection of decisions made in Washington.”
The Kerr family moved back and forth between California and the Middle East over the next few years, following Malcolm and Ann’s academic vocations. By 1981, Ann had completed her master’s degree in Teaching English as a Foreign Language at the American University in Cairo, where Malcolm ran the University of California Education Abroad Program. However, the following year Malcolm was asked to be the president of the American University of Beirut. Despite the dangers posed by the ongoing civil war in Lebanon at the time, Malcolm and Ann could not refuse the opportunity to return to Beirut and head the University that meant so much to them.
On the morning of January 18, 1984, tragedy struck when Malcolm Kerr was fatally shot by two gunmen outside of his office at the American University of Beirut. Islamic Jihad, an Iranian-backed militant group that would later become Hezbollah, claimed credit for Malcolm’s assasination. The assailants claimed Malcolm was a “victim of the American military presence in Lebanon.” It is suspected that Hezbollah, which had a history of targeting prominent Western figures in Lebanon during the civil war, intended Malcolm’s killing to send a message opposing further American intervention in the region.
The devastation caused by this sudden and unexpected act of violence was felt throughout AUB, the broader academic community, and especially within the Kerr family. In a recent interview, Ann reflected that Malcolm wasn’t killed for a personal reason, but rather because of the “liberal, open-minded ideas” that he and AUB represented. She writes in a biography of Malcolm, “The irony, of course, was that they had killed a man who understood and loved the Middle East as much as any foreigner could.”
For many, the loss of a loved one at the hands of violence can cause a retreat into isolation and a loss of faith in humanity. But not for Ann. Instead of turning her back on a region of the world that had brought her so much pain, Ann decided to make it her life’s work to contribute to peace through cross-cultural education.
She soon began teaching English at the American University in Cairo, where she lived for several years after Malcolm’s death. In 1989, Ann returned home to Southern California. She began working at the UCLA International Institute in 1991, where she still serves as the Fulbright Coordinator and teaches undergraduate classes today. In 2017, Ann and her children created the Kerr Family Centennial Scholars Endowment, which funds the higher education of young students from the Middle East at the UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies.
Ann also continues to support the academic institutions in the Arab world she holds so dear to her heart. She has served on the board of trustees for the American University of Beirut since 2010, and established the Kerr Family Scholarship at both the American University of Beirut and the American University in Cairo to support the education of undergraduate students. Ann has also written two books on her experiences in the Middle East and is involved with several think tanks that advise on foreign policy in the region.
When I asked Ann how she had the strength to continue the work that Malcolm started after his death, she said, “I think I just worked harder toward our goals. That’s how I dealt with my husband’s death. You know, fight harder. Steve, who is the coach of the Golden State Warriors, fought harder on the basketball court. My other kids did the same in their own fields.”
However, for Ann the “fight” for peace is far from over. Reflecting on the state of affairs in the Middle East since Malcolm’s death, she remarks, “there’s been a downward spiral ever since.” She compares the region’s recent history to the Greek myth of Sisyphus, who was sentenced by the gods to an eternal cycle of pushing a rock up a hill, just to watch it roll back down again. She says, “I think that’s what the human race does. Though, I do think the human race is amazingly resilient.”
Today, the Middle East continues to be plagued by many of the same conflicts that motivated the assasination of Malcolm Kerr 42 years ago. Israel has occupied and demolished large regions of southern Lebanon in its fight against Hezbollah, which still remains active more than 40 years later. The Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023 claimed the lives of over 1,200 Israelis. The Palestinian Ministry of Health reports that the ensuing Israeli military campaign has killed over 73,000 Palestinians in Gaza as of July, in what the International Association of Genocide Scholars has deemed a genocide of the Palestinian people. The ongoing war the US and Israel are fighting against Iran has plunged the region into further turmoil, with no clear resolution in sight.
Despite the dismal political landscape in the region, Ann remains committed to informing the next generation of world leaders by fostering dialogue between students and academics. Ann’s freshman seminar class at UCLA, called “Perceptions of the U.S. Abroad,” invites Fulbright scholars from around the world to speak to students each week about their home country and their views on the U.S.
As a former student of Professor Kerr’s, I benefited tremendously from the exposure to foreign viewpoints of my country during this seminar. When I asked Ann about what she hopes students take away from her courses, she replied, “My hope is that we will all, from these Fulbright scholars’ perspectives, learn that in some ways we’re all alike, but in some ways we have very great cultural differences. And [these cultural differences] need to be listened to for us to get along with each other in the world.” Ann also reflected on the issues that she observes in the world that motivate her continued commitment to cross-cultural education. She explains, “I think we’ve seen huge mistakes made in our country, going into foreign wars. And so I’m just hoping that people who go through these seminars will come out with a worldview, an awareness of the importance of differences, and how fascinating the differences are.”
Recently, many college campuses have been at the center of tense debates on global issues. The quarter after I enrolled in Professor Kerr’s seminar, the UCLA campus became a stage for both peaceful and violent demonstrations from pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli groups expressing their views on the ongoing war in Gaza. In April of 2024, there was a week-long suspension of in-person classes resulting from the violent counter protests over the pro-Palestinian encampments at UCLA.
While it is not a new phenomenon for college campuses to host politically-motivated student protests, the demonstrations in April 2024 represented the most recent example of college students being thrust into the national spotlight for expressing and defending their views. As a UCLA student at the time, it was nearly impossible to avoid engaging in tense conversations with my peers over the issues being debated on campus. Although it was a difficult time for students and faculty alike, this period highlighted the importance of maintaining civility and understanding the common desire for recognition and safety despite our differences.
Given her experience as a teacher of Global Studies, I asked Ann about how she creates a classroom environment that allows students to discuss highly polarized issues in a productive way. Ann says, “I think it’s important, in theory, for anyone who’s teaching a group or running a class to let that person [the student] speak his mind to a certain extent … But if it’s not going anywhere, if it’s not productive, then you have to steer it in a different direction.” Ann clearly differentiates between constructive, good faith debate and the kind of bigoted argumentation that has become increasingly popular in modern political discourse. Ann acknowledges that while “self selected groups take this [Global Studies] course,” she can only hope that her students are “open to new ideas.”
Despite the challenges the world faces, Ann seems to be optimistic about the next generation of leaders. “I love to see people in my classes taking it all in and writing well,” she says. Ann also reflected on the unprecedented amount of information that young people can access thanks to modern technology. Information is so readily available, she says, all you have to do is “just keep your eyes open, and your ears open.” In other words, it has never been easier to learn and to expose oneself to new ideas.
If there is one thing to take away from Ann Kerr’s story, it is the importance of understanding the “common denominator of humanity.” Ann believes that achieving a more tolerant world requires constantly reminding ourselves that we all share in the human experience together. The ability to see the world as others do is not an innately human trait, but a skill that must constantly be sharpened. For Ann, as for us all, learning is a lifelong journey that brings rewards every step of the way.
