Lewis is a sought-after public speaker whose mainstage TED Talk has garnered over three million views. She has delivered keynote commencement addresses at venues ranging from the UN General Assembly and the Edinburgh International Festival to World Business Forum and Yale University, as well as numerous universities and organizations across the United States and abroad.
New York University, Center for Black Visual Culture/Institute of African American Affairs, The Black Civil War Soldier: A Visual History of Conflict and Citizenship, A book talk with Sarah Lewis, Matthew Fox-Amato and Deborah Willis
Roger Williams University, School of Architecture, “Groundwork: Race and Aesthetics in the Era of Stand Your Ground Law”
ASALH and PBS Books, To Make Their Own Way in the World, A Conversation with Deborah Willis, Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, and Sarah Elizabeth Lewis, moderated by Ilisa Barbash
Capella University, Commencement Address (Virtual)
Rasmussen University, Annual Academic Symposium
Museum of Tolerance, Mr. SOUL! Virtual Q+A, featuring Doug Blush, Nikki Giovanni, Melissa Haizlip, Blair Underwood, moderated by Sarah Lewis
Christiane Amanpour show, Interviewed by Walter Isaacson
C19: The Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists, “The Circassian Beauties and the Caucasian War,” Managing Sight: African American Visual Tactics
Harvard Book Store, Panel, To Make Their Own Way in the World book launch
The Graduate Center, City University of New York, “Change: How Artists Lead the Way”
Vera List Center for Art and Politics, White Lies: A Tribute to Maurice Berger [Memorial Panel discussion]
University of North Carolina, Greensboro. College of Visual and Performing Arts Virtual Master Class Series
Isaac Julien in conversation with Angela Y. Davis, moderated by Sarah Lewis, A partnership with McEvoy Foundation for the Arts and Museum of African Diaspora
Harvard University, 19th Annual Navin Narayan Memorial Lecture, The Committee on Degrees in Social Studies
Yale School of Art, Commencement Address Speaker
Yale School of Art, Commencement Address Speaker
Opening for Amanda Theater, Array, Los Angeles
University of Kentucky, Robert C. May Photography Lecture, Vision & Justice
Tanner Lecture in Human Values, “Images, Place, and Cultural Memory,” Southern Utah University
Aspen Ideas Festival, Conversation with Carrie Mae Weems
“On monuments: place, time, memory,” Harvard University Committee on the Arts (HUCA), Tribute to President Drew Gilpin Faust
Harvard University, Neiman Foundation, 80th Anniversary celebration