Dr. Raymond Burse, a Hopkinsville native and 1973 Rhodes scholar, will be the keynote speaker for the 50th Unity Breakfast on Thursday, Oct. 24, at the James E. Bruce Convention Center.
Burse, who is the current board chairman for the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights, served as president of Kentucky State University from July 1982 to April 1989 and again from August 2014 to May 2016.
As a college administrator, attorney and business executive, Burse has long promoted the importance of education.
Speaking to a Hopkinsville audience of high school students in 2012, he said, “Get enough education so you won’t have to look up to anyone, and then get a little bit more so you won’t look down on anyone either.”
Burse was recruited for the second term as president to help stabilize the historically Black college in Frankfort during a period of financial troubles and declining enrollment. He attracted national praise when he gave up $90,000 of his $350,000 salary and used the money to boost the pay for a few dozen of KSU’s lowest-paid employees. But his efforts to put KSU in better shape financially also resulted in complaints from some faculty, and he resigned abruptly in 2016, saying the school needed new leadership.