Thank you President Smith, to the Board, to the faculty for this honor. Though for those who knew the football team when I was here, there was really no contradiction between pacifism and our team.

I'm especially honored to share this stage with the other honorees: a true giant of this institution who's touched the lives, literally, of tens of thousands of students in Maurice Eldridge; a champion and pioneer of education in Kimberley; and Joseph, who's accomplished things at such a young age that are extraordinary. And I was telling him, I think the only danger for him is getting lost in the hordes of other fashion icons that this institution has produced. That is what we're known for, isn't it?

I'm grateful to you for many reasons, so I hope you'll forgive me if I begin with the most personal. You're giving me this platform to do something publicly that I didn't have the occasion to do the last time I stood on a Swarthmore Commencement stage 31 years ago. It was a very bittersweet day for me and my family.

My father had passed away just days earlier. In fact, he died suddenly and unexpectedly almost at the precise moment that I slipped my final term paper under a professor's door as my last requirement to qualify for my degree. I was told that he was found with a slightly smiling expression on his face, which I have always thought since then was not a coincidence. He and my mother did what so many parents, especially immigrant parents, do, which is to work tirelessly to get my brother and myself to the best education system they could afford.

I didn't have the chance to thank him or her then from the commencement stage, so I do that now. Thank you, mom. And I really urge every one of you who's sitting in the front rows here, if you haven't done so already, to thank your parents and your caregivers for getting you here. There's also a good chance that you're going to need to continue to borrow money from them for a while, so it's a good idea.

If only my good fortune and parents carried over to the friends that I made at Swarthmore. Alas, unfortunately, upon hearing that I would receive this honor, several of my closest Swarthmore friends took to lampooning me on a WhatsApp text chain that includes even a drafted acceptance speech by my former college roommate, pointing out how bad things have gotten in the world since I dedicated my life to improving it. I've decided not to read that speech to you today. But thank you, Michael, for the suggestion.

Notwithstanding my choice of roommate, Swarthmore was life-changing for me in the best way. I had several experiences here that set me on the path to the most meaningful career I could imagine. One memory is especially vivid today. It was 1993, my junior year. I had just come off of a personal development experience designed by a labor lawyer who worked here at Swarthmore named Pat Whitman. Upon hearing that I would receive this honor, I reached out for the first time in decades and invited her to join us, and I'm so glad she could be here.

The program she started outside of classes put me and 11 other students into dialogue sessions together every week for two hours, where we would alternate between a session discussing a really difficult topic, and then the next week a session reflecting on how we engage in that discussion, and giving each other direct critical feedback on how people received our interventions. It was a crash course in group dynamics, in group facilitation skills, and frankly in self-awareness. And it remains to this day, one of the best personal or professional development experiences I ever had.

Unfortunately, it also left me a bit overconfident in my own abilities. Shortly after it ended and the Oslo Peace Accords were signed between Israeli and Palestinian leaders, I convened a dialogue for students, Muslim and Jewish students who cared about that conflict on this campus. The only thing, honestly, that I recall now from that experience was the thought that kept running through my head as they all filed out of the room after 90 tense minutes together. I was pretty sure every one of them was angrier than they were when they had come in.

Despite that failure, that experience whet my appetite. And as I looked for other opportunities to strengthen my capabilities to try to contribute to peace building and justice, I got my second big break thanks to this institution. I received just a $2,000 stipend from the Public Policy Program so that I could take an unpaid internship with Search for Common Ground, the organization I now have the privilege to lead. At that time, the organization just had 12 staff and one office. And today we employ over 600 staff in more than 35 countries, taking incredible risks and demonstrating great tenacity and audacity to build a better world. In the interim over those decades, I also learned from other great peace builders. I had the occasion to work with Kofi Annan, Archbishop Tutu, and others. And from that privilege, there are too many lessons that I've learned to share with you.

But as you're honoring me for the contributions to peace building at a time when this country and the world at large is in an absolute crisis of escalating polarization and proliferating violent conflict, including daily atrocities, a crisis that I know has sadly also touched this community over the last 18 months especially, and even today. Allow me to just share two insights.

The first is that nonviolent youth activism is the most powerful movement building in the world. Even as it is almost always derided in its time as naive, overly simplistic, unrealistic, it is often recognized years or even decades later for being on the right side of history. We oftentimes forget that Martin Luther King was just 26 years old when he led the Montgomery Bus Boycott. That Nelson Mandela was only 25 years old when he co-founded the Youth Wing of the African National Congress. That Mahatma Gandhi was only 24 years old when he established the Natal Indian Congress in South Africa to protect the Indian minority there, before returning to his home country to lead the liberation movement. And that more recently, Greta Thunberg, Malala were only 15 years old each when they launched the movements that would mobilize global support for critical causes.

In those instances, when humanity has finally taken a necessary and overdue leap forward towards greater peace and justice, its roots are almost always found in that kind of youth activism. And so I see and honor those young people who refuse to accept the injustices that you see in the world around you and who demand better.

The second insight is a little trickier, and I relearned it yet again just a few months ago when I was visiting our team in coastal Kenya, and I met with Bishop Abarija Kenoga, a key leader in an interfaith council that's been working in that region to prevent violence and build peace for decades. When I asked how he got involved in the initiative, he said, "Let me tell you a story."

He said, "It was 1999 at the height of some of the worst interreligious conflict and violence that this country had ever seen, and I was so furious that I opened an interfaith meeting with these words: "If one more church is burned down, I'm going to have five mosques burned down." And as he was retelling this story to me, he leaned in and he said, "And I could have done it. There are a lot of people here who listened to me."

But then he told how he had to sit and listen to the Muslim leaders who shared the experiences of discrimination, unfair treatment, and violence that they were facing. They couldn't agree to anything that day, except for one critical agreement: That they would do everything they could to prevent atrocities from their communities of the other communities. That agreement stuck. And now years, and even decades later, it has flourished into one of the most powerful interfaith alliances in eastern Africa. Preventing violence, preventing politicians from stoking divisions between communities in order to gain votes, and building a better future and present for Kenyans of all faiths.

Transformative change rarely comes from one-sided advocacy, but rather from courageous coalitions built across dividing lines. Our credibility often derives from our principled defense of and support for the communities for whom we feel the most empathy. But our ability to deliver a better future for everyone often comes when we're able to generate the courage to meet, to listen to, and to build a common agenda with those with whom we may have profound disagreement, even legitimate grievances. In an era largely defined by the YouTube motto, "Broadcast Yourself," I do worry that as we all perfect our means of self-expression, we're losing the ability and even the willingness to listen.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg famously said, "Fight for the things you believe in, but do it in a way that will make others want to join you. There's no path to get there without listening."

So to sum up, congratulations to you. Thank your parents. Thanks to all the people, staff, faculty, other students who made your experience here special over the last four years. Support non-violent youth activism wherever you find it. Listen well. And be really careful who you choose as a roommate. Thank you.