Megan Norton gives the commencement speech to the graduating class of 2016 at the School of International Service at American University. She reflects on her own experience of living in 9 countries and moving 17 times, which caused her to feel displaced and unsure of her own identity. At SIS, she found a community that embraced cultural complexity and fluid identities. Through her work facilitating intercultural dialogues, she witnessed both tensions around religious differences but also students choosing understanding over simplification. She encourages the graduates to take the lessons of cultural curiosity and breaking down barriers of fear or resistance with them as they leave SIS.

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School of International Service
American University
Commencement Speech 2016
By: Megan Norton
MA International Communication Candidate
Good evening President Kerwin, deans, members of the faculty, proud parents and
families, and above all, graduates.
I have spent my life packing and unpacking boxes. I have lived in 9 countries and three
U.S. States. I have moved a total of 17 times. So you can imagine the boxes I’ve accumulated
along the way; boxes from South Africa, Germany, Japan, Israel, Greece, Hungary…a lot of
places. When I moved to DC, it was the first time that I had all of these boxes in one space and I
started unpacking. I saw all the things I had identified with or that identified me. I was looking
at not only tangible objects but also intangible ones. I was unpacking the values and beliefs and
thought patterns that had shaped my worldview. In doing this I had feelings of displacement and
I didn’t feel like I belonged anywhere. I felt the urge to pack up my boxes and to move again.
Moving would be easier to do than to confront the accompanying unease of trying to figure out
what my identity was and who I wanted to become.
But I stayed. And I observed. And I learned that I wasn’t the only one unpacking my
identity in the School of International Service. My classmates and I were reorganizing our ways
of knowing and of being. We were recognizing our assumptions of not only each other but also
of the world we operate in. I remember a moment in one of my classes when I shared that I was
one of the students in the first integrated schools in post-apartheid South Africa. This ignited
conversations immediately about race, power, and privilege. It was in moments like this that I
saw my in between identity manifested in concrete new ways of belonging.

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I became part of this multi-cultural community bound together by the shared commitment
to accept that identity is fluid and complex. And I learned that SIS celebrates the power of seeing
beyond identity boxes that so often imperfectly define us.
SIS integrates this message into its orientation toward service. As a form of service here
at AU, I volunteered to be an intercultural dialogue facilitator. In facilitating cross-cultural
communication between groups of both undergraduate and graduate students, I experienced the
complexity of culture in new ways. One dialogue session stands out vividly. I had just landed at
DCA from visiting family in another State and was headed to AU when I received a text message
from a participant that said: “Can we talk about what just happened on campus?” What just
happened on campus, I thought? And should I be going there? She was referring to Anti-
Muslim fliers had been put around campus, but immediately reported and taken down. In our
intergroup dialogue, we discussed how religion and faith are integral parts of our identity and we
must be aware that sometimes people are forced to box it up and keep it hidden. I realized that I
had never had to hide my faith for fear of physical safety. In our session we made space for
stillness and for reflection. We were vulnerable and authentic with one another. In that moment
we chose to understand rather than to simplify; and to acknowledge our agency to foster respect
and tolerance.
When President Obama visited our campus last year, he spoke to this as well. He said:
“Being an American is not a matter of blood or birth. It’s a matter of faith, of shared fidelity to
the ideas and values that we hold so dear. That’s what makes us unique. That’s what makes us
strong. Anybody can help us write the next great chapter in our history.”
President Obama’s reference to “anybody can help us” resonates with us graduates as we
see the invisible boundaries that usually divide our world and have been trained to lean into the

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discomfort of stretching our comfort zones to understand how the interplay of culture, politics,
race, and gender frame our behavior.
As SIS graduates, we are committed to celebrate cultural complexities and we are
equipped to engage global challenges in our professional careers and future scholarship.
For all of us here today, we need to remember that as we move in and out and between
social groups, we are making a difference in the world. It is our decision as to whether we are
building boxes of fear and resistance or breaking down boxes with generosity and empathy.
Class of 2016: this is our commencement, our beginning. The beginning of new
interactions, collaborations and intersectionalities of what constitutes shared identity. Perhaps
you’re about to pack up your own boxes to move out of DC. Remember to take our culture of
service, tolerance, and curiosity to navigate this increasingly interdependent world.