Three years before he became the nation’s 34th president, Dwight Eisenhower was awarded an honorary doctorate at the Aug. 23 summer Commencement ceremony. Photo: DU Archives
While Oct. 3 marks the first time that the University of Denver — or, indeed, Colorado — has hosted a presidential debate, it is hardly the University’s first encounter with the nation’s highest elected office.
Over the years, the University has been visited a number of times by sitting, future and former U.S. presidents. The most frequent visitor so far has been Bill Clinton, who has been to campus three times.
Here is a timeline of past DU presidential visits. An exhibit about presidential visits to the DU campus will go up in mid-September in the Ritchie Center.
1911: William Howard Taft made the first presidential visit to campus in 1911. Coincidentally, Taft came to DU on Oct. 3—the same date as the upcoming debate. Taft knew Chancellor Henry Buchtel through Republican party politics. Buchtel had served as the governor of Colorado just a few years earlier.
1950: Three years before he became the nation’s 34th president, Dwight Eisenhower was awarded an honorary doctorate at the Aug. 23 summer Commencement ceremony. Eisenhower spent a lot of time in Denver because it was the hometown of his wife, Mamie. He also knew then-Chancellor Albert Jacobs, who had been provost at Columbia University when Eisenhower was president of that institution.
1960: On Feb. 4, then-Sen. John F. Kennedy came to Denver in an appearance sponsored by the DU Social Science Foundation. He did not actually visit campus; his speech, “The Global Challenges We Face,” was delivered downtown at the Denver Auditorium. The Denver Post at the time described Kennedy as “a possible candidate for the 1960 Democratic presidential nomination.”
1961: In an event sponsored by the DU Young Republicans League, former vice president and future president Richard Nixon spoke to an audience of 4,000 at the DU Arena on Sept. 13.
1966: President Lyndon Johnson received an honorary degree at the summer Commencement ceremony on Aug. 26 in the DU Arena.
1979: Future president Ronald Reagan spoke at the arena-fieldhouse on campus on April 8. Though he was not yet an official candidate, it was widely speculated at the time that Reagan would soon announce his plans to run for the presidency.
1997: President Bill Clinton was part of the G8 Summit that met June 21 at the DU-owned Phipps Mansion. The building and its grounds were sold to private buyers in 2010.
2000: President Clinton appeared at Sturm Hall April 12 for a town hall meeting on gun control.
2008: On Jan. 30, a past president and a future president appeared on campus on the same day, both at Magness Arena. Future President Barack Obama made a morning appearance and former president Bill Clinton made an evening campaign stop as part of wife Hillary’s presidential campaign. Denver hosted the Democratic National Convention in August.