UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY FOUNDERS DAY

February 22, 2019 marks the University of Kentucky's 154th birthday.  To celebrate the conclusion of UK's centennial celebration in 1966, the university invited then UN Ambassador Arthur Goldberg to speak at the Founders Day Convocation and to receive an honorary degree.

Ambassador Arthur Goldberg receiving honorary degree from the
University of Kentucky at the 1966 Founders Day Convocation.


Prior to becoming ambassador in 1965, Goldberg served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1962 to 1965.  Ambassador Goldberg said that he left the court and accepted the UN appointment, in part, to help bring an end to the devastating war in Vietnam.  At the UK convocation, Ambassador Goldberg noted that the "national debate on America's Vietnam policy has shown a remarkable consensus.




Ambassador Arthur Goldberg speaking at a press conference prior to the Founders Day Convocation.  Left to right, Governor Edward T. "Ned" Breathitt, Ambassador Goldberg, and UK President John Oswald.

But on the UK campus in February 1966 there seemed to be little consensus.  Protests and counter protests marred Ambassador Goldberg's visit to UK as anti-war picketers in front of Memorial Coliseum were pelted with eggs.  According to the Kentucky Kernel:

"The pickets, many of them members of the campus Students for a Democratic Society, were surrounded by approximately 200 onlookers shortly after they began their protest about 1:30 p.m. Just before 2 p.m., students with eggs concealed in their pockets infiltrated the crowd, and the barrage began.  Shells cracked on the heads, clothes, and signs of the picketers, oozing yellow yolk and sticky white. Most of the missiles broke on the sidewalk, as the throwers sacrificed accuracy for anonymity."

Just six months after his UK visit, anti-war protesters in Chicago reminded a national television audience during the Democratic Convention that "the whole world is watching."  Ambassador Goldberg left his post at the UN in 1968 before achieving his goals regarding Vietnam.  What was at the time America's longest war would not officially end until 1975.