April 20, 2024

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Art Is Experience

The Last Dance: Michael Jordan series ‘shines light’ on professor’s legacy


Michael Jordan 1997Impression copyright
Alexander Hassenstein/Getty
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The documentary The Very last Dance handles basketball legend Michael Jordan’s vocation

An acclaimed documentary on basketball star Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls has aided “glow a gentle” on the legacy of a professor killed in Beirut.

Malcolm Kerr’s 1984 murder was talked over on The Very last Dance by his son Steve – just one of Jordan’s workforce mates.

Prof Kerr’s daughter, Cambridgeshire councillor Susan van de Ven, explained the clearly show experienced been “particularly generous… to explore my father’s legacy”.

The 10-episode Netflix and ESPN series also included Jordan’s father’s death.

Ms van de Ven explained her father believed “the best American export was schooling” and scholarships have been developed in his memory at a Beirut university.

Jordan and Kerr played jointly when digicam crews followed them through the championship year of 1997-ninety eight.


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Susan van de Ven
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The Kerr loved ones, together with Malcolm (suitable), Susan (to his still left) and Steve standing by his mom Ann

Prof Kerr was appointed president of the American College of Beirut (AUB) in March 1982, soon in advance of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon.

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  • Why everyone’s talking about The Very last Dance

He experienced spent a great deal of his everyday living in the Middle East.


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Nathaniel S. Butler/Getty
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Michael Jordan and Steve Kerr celebrating the Chicago Bulls’ 1997 NBA Finals acquire

The university was “special in the Middle East in crossing all the divides, political and religious”, in accordance to Ms van de Ven, a British citizen who life in Meldreth.

“It was his property local community [despite the fact that] he realized there was a real risk to his everyday living,” she explained.

He moved to Beirut in August 1982 and was shot lifeless outdoors his business in January 1984, aged fifty two.


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Between 1975 and early nineties a civil war in Lebanon killed up to a hundred,000 individuals and still left a great deal of the nation and its overall economy in ruins

Many westerners ended up held hostage in the metropolis around the subsequent couple a long time, together with Belfast-born AUB lecturer Brian Keenan, journalist John McCarthy and peace envoy Terry Waite.

Ms van de Ven met her Netherlands-born husband, Hans van de Ven, in 1982 although they ended up students at Harvard College.

They moved to Cambridgeshire in 1988 for his career as a lecturer of fashionable Chinese background at the College of Cambridge.

Ms van de Ven, a Liberal Democrat county councillor, explained: “AUB’s mission – and the just one our father believed in so passionately – was about the worth of schooling in fostering worldwide knowledge and cooperation.”


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Susan van de Ven
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Susan van de Ven and her brother Steve Kerr

The Kerrs carry on to be related with the university, with Prof Kerr’s widow Ann Kerr-Adams a trustee.

Ms van de Ven explained The Very last Dance experienced aided “glow a gentle” on her father’s legacy.

“[It} was particularly generous in taking time out to explore my father’s legacy that is so timeless about the universal worth of schooling,” she explained.

Her brother is now head mentor of the Golden State Warriors in San Francisco.

“I see my father’s values in the way my brother ways his position as a mentor – compassion and empathy make groups of individuals get the job done properly jointly,” Ms van de Ven explained.

“That has to be true in real everyday living way too.”



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