‘We Cannot Turn Our Backs on One Another’
In Last Lecture, Sarah Duff encourages seniors to find hope through connections and community
In presenting the traditional Last Lecture to the senior class, historian Sarah Duff faced a dilemma. How could she be inspirational while also addressing the uncertainty of this moment?
While Duff admitted she doesn’t know what the future will bring, she assured the students that as a historian, she is good at generating ideas. “This lecture is going to be about one idea in particular—and one which, I think and hope, might be useful for you as you go out into the world,” said the associate professor of history.
The idea centers around conjuncture, which means to bind, join, or combine.
Historians use the word conjuncture to define a period when forces come together to give it shape. Our current conjuncture, which Duff identified as the last 15 years, includes “the 2008 economic crash, and takes in—among other phenomena—increasing economic volatility, the emergence of autocratic political movements around the globe, the Covid-19 pandemic, accelerating climate change, and the rise of artificial intelligence,” she said.
Duff admitted that under these circumstances, “it’s not unreasonable to feel defeated,” adding that social isolation is one of the most acute consequences of this current conjuncture.
However, she used the Last Lecture to argue that “retreat and defeat and self-isolation are not options at this moment,” she said. “We cannot afford now to turn our backs on one another.”
A conjuncture, she suggested, also implies connection and community.
The work of creating change
Duff is the recipient of the 2025 Charles Bassett Teaching Award. The senior class, which selected her as the winner, came together May 20 to hear her deliver the Last Lecture, now in its 33rd year.
“Professor Duff is a once-in-a-lifetime kind of teacher,” said Amanda Alpert ’25, a global studies major. “She is so engaging and passionate about teaching students while also pushing them to critically think about the text and structures of power that both influence history and our understanding of it.”
After her opening remarks, Duff focused her lecture on groups and their ability to make change.
“In this intensely individualistic society, we are often made to feel that the only route to making change is as a leader,” she said. “But while leaders might have ideas, it’s groups of people who actually do the work of change.”
She offered two examples of everyday citizens forming groups to enact change.
First, the Black Panthers’ Free Breakfast for School Children Program, which began in West Oakland, Calif., in 1969 and within months spread to cities across the United States. “This was an absolutely massive undertaking, relying on the work of dozens and dozens of people—and more for those programs that reported feeding more than 1,000 children a week,” said Duff.
The breakfast program, run by volunteers, faced harassment from law enforcement, which also raided sites and destroyed food. But its success eventually compelled the federal government to authorize the National School Breakfast Program in 1975.
“I like this example because it shows us what the work of ordinary people can do, locally, in response to the needs of friends and neighbors, and under circumstances which were almost impossibly difficult,” said Duff.
‘In this intensely individualistic society, we are often made to feel that the only route to making change is as a leader. But while leaders might have ideas, it’s groups of people who actually do the work of change.’
Associate Professor of History Sarah Duff
Her second example came from her native South Africa, which was at the epicenter of the global AIDS epidemic beginning in the 1980s. The state’s refusal to address the crisis for more than a decade is the main reason HIV infections in South Africa became rampant, Duff said. But in 1998, a small group gathered in Cape Town demanding that antiretrovirals (ARTs), proven to treat the disease, be made available to those living with HIV.
That small group grew into the Treatment Action Campaign, or TAC, which Duff said “fought first the pharmaceutical companies and then the South African state to provide treatment for people who could not afford to buy ARTs and other vital medications.”
By 2008 HIV was officially recognized as a crisis in South Africa, and a national HIV counselling and testing campaign was launched. Since 2010 AIDS-related deaths have dropped by 66 percent, and new HIV infections have fallen by 58 percent in South Africa.
“I am not exaggerating,” Duff emphasized, “when I say that none of this would have been possible without the TAC, which continues to be a powerful force in South African politics and society.”
Coming together
Alpert found Duff’s lecture impactful. “My friends and I all agreed we were very comforted to listen to a last lecture that acknowledges the current hardships in the world and what we’re facing in graduating,” she said.
At the same time, Alpert valued the emphasis on community. “Professor Duff inspires me to continue being a part of a community, both in class and the larger world, with her work and spirit,” she said. “Community is something we should all continue to keep in mind when branching out into the world.”
That’s exactly the message Duff hoped to impart.
“We exist in intellectual—and other—communities,” said Duff, gesturing to everyone in the room.
“And that, really, is what I want to say. Divided we fall,” she concluded, imploring. “Come together.”
