 On his return from the UN, Blyden served as Special Adviser to the President, and played an active role during the 1980 OAU Summit in Sierra Leone, at which he was awarded the United Nations Peace Medal by the visiting U.N. Secretary General.He received honorary degrees from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka and Lincoln University.He gave the keynote speech at the 100th Anniversary of the University of Liberia (formally Liberia College), an institution at which his grandfather Edward Wilmot Blyden had been a founding Professor.