The Alfred M. Landon Lecture Series is a series of speeches on current public affairs, which is organized and hosted by Kansas State University, in Manhattan, Kansas, United States. It is named after Kansas politician Alf Landon, former Governor of Kansas and Republican presidential candidate.[1] The first lecture in the series was given by Landon on December 13, 1966.[2]
The lecture series has been described as "prestigious,"[3][4][5][6] and Eric Lichtblau noted in his 2008 book Bush's Law: The Remaking of American Justice that the "Landon Lecture Series has provided an unlikely but powerful platform allowing world leaders, from Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev to Jimmy Carter and Henry Kissinger, to expound on the critical public issues of the day."[7]
Among the speakers who have delivered Landon Lectures are ten Nobel laureates, eight Pulitzer Prize-winners, and more than 40 Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients.
Every U.S. President from the founding of the series in 1966 to 2008 delivered a Landon lecture, excepting only Lyndon B. Johnson.[2] George W. Bush (2006), Ronald Reagan (1982) and Richard Nixon (1970) delivered speeches during their tenure in office. Bill Clinton (2007), Jimmy Carter (1991) and Gerald Ford (1978) spoke after leaving office. George H. W. Bush delivered a Landon Lecture while serving as vice president of the United States in 1985, before being elected to the presidency. Before Reagan delivered his Landon Lecture as U.S. president in 1982, he previously spoke in the series in 1967, while governor of California.
Other sitting U.S. federal officials to speak in the series include: Vice President Walter Mondale; Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield; Minority Leaders Hugh Scott, Howard Baker and Tom Daschle; House Speakers Tip O'Neill and Jim Wright; Supreme Court justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Sonia Sotomayor; and Attorney General Janet Reno.[2] In addition, nine current or former foreign heads of state have also spoken in the series, including former Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev, former British Prime Minister Harold Wilson, former Malawian President Joyce Banda, and former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo.[2]
U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy was one of twenty-two active U.S. Senators to deliver a lecture in the series (including also his brother Ted Kennedy in 1984). Kennedy's speech on March 18, 1968, "Conflict in Vietnam and at Home", is notable for being the first speech Kennedy delivered after announcing his much-anticipated candidacy for the U.S. presidency two days earlier.[8] The campaign speech was attended by a crowd of 14,500 people, and Kennedy used the opportunity to share anti-war views on the Vietnam War.[9] Evan Thomas wrote in his biography of Kennedy that "the setting was ideal for a raucous campaign kickoff."[8] Kennedy was assassinated less than three months later, on June 6, 1968, after winning the California Democratic primary.
U.S. General William Westmoreland, a main target for student protests against the Vietnam War, spoke on April 9, 1969.[10] The alternative newspaper in Lawrence, Kansas, wrote afterwards: "The man himself came to speak to the students of Kansas State. Yes, General William Westmoreland decided to deliver his first college lecture since returning from Viet Nam here, and he could not have picked a better place. Kansas State students will be courteous at all times... The General was greeted by applause, by cheering, by approval."[11]
U.S. President Richard Nixon spoke at the Landon Lecture Series on September 16, 1970.[10] As student protestors gathered outside, Nixon delivered what the Christian Science Monitor called "one of the strongest and most uncompromising speeches of his career," denouncing the protests as part of a "cancerous disease" that is gripping the United States. Nixon asserted: "we face the greatest crisis in the history of American education today."[12] The complete speech was aired on network television, and then rebroadcast on several local stations after Nixon supporters purchased time to re-air it.
Former Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith was scheduled to deliver a Landon Lecture on October 31, 1980. The speech was disrupted by protestors objecting to the denial of voting rights to blacks in the former Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) under Smith's governance. Due to the controversy, the speech was recategorized as a non-Landon Lecture and is not included in the history of the series.[13]
MSNBC news reporter Ashleigh Banfield delivered a Landon Lecture on April 24, 2003. Banfield used the forum to raise concerns regarding media coverage of the Iraq War. She spoke against "cable news operators who wrap themselves in the American flag and go after a certain target demographic" and specifically named Fox News Channel as an example.[14][15] The New York Times reported that her speech angered NBC management, who rebuked her and lowered her profile.[16][17]
On January 23, 2006, U.S. President George W. Bush spoke at the Landon Lecture, one month after news reports broke the story of the U.S. government's warrantless wiretapping of telephone conversations in the United States. In his Landon Lecture, Bush gave the domestic wiretapping program the name of "Terrorist Surveillance Program" for the first time.[7][18] Before Bush's speech, NPR aired a piece comparing Bush's Landon Lecture speech to Nixon's appearance in the series in 1970, noting both were defending their national security policies "as public discontent with a foreign war persists."[19]
Through January 2024 there have been 183 Landon Lectures, featuring 186 speakers.[2] The most recent speaker was David Beasley, Executive Director of the United Nations World Food Programme, who spoke on November 3, 2022.[20] Unless otherwise noted, the speaker held the office indicated below at the time the Landon Lecture was delivered:
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