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President Bill Clinton to Speak at NYU Abu Dhabi’s First Graduation Ceremony

Press Release

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.

About NYU Abu Dhabi

NYU Abu Dhabi is the first comprehensive liberal arts and research campus in the Middle East to be operated abroad by a major American research university. NYU Abu Dhabi has integrated a highly selective undergraduate curriculum across the disciplines with a world center for advanced research and scholarship. The university enables its students in the sciences, engineering, social sciences, humanities, and arts to succeed in an increasingly interdependent world and advance cooperation and progress on humanity’s shared challenges. NYU Abu Dhabi’s high-achieving students have come from over 115 countries and speak over 115 languages. Together, NYU's campuses in New York, Abu Dhabi, and Shanghai form the backbone of a unique global university, giving faculty and students opportunities to experience varied learning environments and immersion in other cultures at one or more of the numerous study-abroad sites NYU maintains on six continents.