Intersectionality--an integrated approach to analyzing the complex, matrix-like interconnections among patterns of discrimination based on race, gender, and other social identities, with the goal of highlighting how resulting inequalities are experienced--has many implications for exploring the relationship between knowledge and experience and for understanding identity and its role in scholarship and teaching. In this brief article, the author explores the significance of intersectionality to a liberal education curriculum in both general education and the major, at two- and four-year colleges and universities, and its potential for undoing what she calls the violent conundrum of our national identity. By denying the contextual, interconnected, and relational dimensions of individual, group, and national identities, such an approach facilitates the dismissal of those identities as signifiers of essentialist identity politics, ultimately distorting the humanity of all. While not a panacea for binary thinking, intersectionality is a necessary framework for methodological and pedagogical engagement with complexity and conflict. It allows one to embrace diversity--in teaching, research, and scholarship; in student and faculty development, recruitment, and retention; and, ultimately, in one's everyday political experiences as a citizen.