Each year, Montana State University welcomes speakers to campus who have gone on remarkable journeys to cross seemingly impassible boundaries. Their stories speak to us about human resilience, about the will to push on through physical and mental hardship, injustice, discrimination and poverty through both time and distance.

These speakers give us an opportunity to see the world from where another person stands. They take us to places, times and situations we would never have imagined ourselves. More than ever, it is important for us to see the world from different perspectives. It is a fundamental practice needed for the nourishment of a peaceful and prosperous democracy.

I hope you will join us for the Crossing Boundaries events. You will find these stories surprising, moving, and, most of all, inspiring. 

– President Waded Cruzado

 

All the events are free and open to the public.

Tommy Orange, a man in a black T-shirt.

Tommy Orange

Aug. 20, 2024

Tommy Orange, an acclaimed Cheyenne and Arapaho writer, will speak at Montana State University's 2024 First Year Student Convocation. His 2018 debut novel "There There" follows 12 Native Americans in Oakland, California in the days leading up to the city’s inaugural Big Oakland Powwow. The book won the PEN/Hemingway Award and the American Book Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and it was hailed by The New York Times as "a new kind of American epic."

Isabel Allende, a woman in an orange blouse.

Isabel Allende

Sept. 30, 2024

Highly acclaimed author, Isabel Allende, the author of 21 books that have sold 65 million copies in 35 languages, will speak at MSU on Sept. 30. The Chilean-American novelist writes in the "magic realism" tradition and is considered one of the first successful women novelists in Latin America. She has written novels based in part on her own experiences, often focusing on the experiences of women, weaving myth and realism together. She has lectured and done extensive book tours and has taught literature at several US colleges. 

Margot Lee Shetterly, a woman in a white jacket.

Margot Lee Shetterly

Oct. 30, 2024

Margot Lee Shetterly, author of “Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race,” will speak Oct. 30 at MSU. Her book topped lists by Publisher's Weekly, Time magazine, USA Today and The New York Times. Shetterly is a scholar-in-residence at the University of Virginia and founded the Human Computer Project, a digital archive of stories about the women who worked in American aeronautics and space programs from the 1930s to 1980s.

Past Crossing Boundaries Speakers

Stephanie Land

Stephanie Land

Aug. 22, 2023

Stephanie Land, author of the bestselling memoir "Maid" about overcoming food and housing insecurity as a single mother while pursuing her dream of a college degree, spoke at Montana State University’s First Year Student Convocation.

Javier Zamora

Javier Zamora

Sept. 19, 2023

Bestselling author Javier Zamora shared the story of his nine-week journey from El Salvador to the United States, as recounted in his memoir, “Solito.” He addressed themes including immigration, mental health, border crossing, community, family, culture and language.

Anthony Ray Hinton

Anthony Ray Hinton

Oct. 18, 2023

Author and activist Anthony Ray Hinton spent 30 years on Alabama's death row after being wrongly convicted of two unsolved murders in 1985. With the assistance of the Equal Justice Initiative, led by attorney Bryan Stevenson, Hinton was freed in 2015 after the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the 1985 decision.