President Bill Clinton, the 42nd President of the United States and founder of The Clinton Foundation, will be the keynote speaker at NYU Abu Dhabi’s inaugural commencement ceremony on May 25, 2014. NYU Abu Dhabi’s graduating class is comprised of some 140 students from 49 countries around the globe, who were admitted through an extraordinarily selective admissions process. The graduation ceremony will be held at NYU Abu Dhabi’s new campus on Saadiyat Island, an academic, research, and cultural center that will officially open this summer.
William Jefferson Clinton was the first Democratic president in six decades to be elected twice – first in 1992 and then in 1996. Under his leadership, the country enjoyed the strongest economy in a generation and the longest economic expansion in U.S. history, including the creation of more than 22 million jobs.
After leaving the White House, President Clinton established the Clinton Foundation with the mission to improve global health, strengthen economies, promote health and wellness, and protect the environment.
In addition to his Foundation work, President Clinton has served as the top United Nations envoy for the Indian Ocean tsunami recovery effort and as the UN Special Envoy to Haiti. Today, the Clinton Foundation is supporting economic growth, capacity building, and education in Haiti.
Clinton received an honorary degree from New York University in 2011. This is not President Clinton’s first interaction with NYUAD. In April 2012 he presented an international group of NYU Abu Dhabi students with the top prize in the annual Hult Global Case Challenge.