KEN THOMAS
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — Former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton are in Oxford, England, this weekend to attend the graduation ceremonies of their daughter, Chelsea.
Chelsea Clinton will receive her doctorate degree in international relations on Saturday from the prestigious British university. Her father was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford from 1968 to 1970.
The graduation ceremony comes as her mother is considering a potential 2016 presidential campaign.
The 34-year-old Clinton is reaching a number of milestones this year. In addition to her doctorate, Clinton and her husband, Marc Mezvinsky, are expecting their first child in the fall. And she has taken a more public role at her family’s Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, where she serves as vice chairwoman.
If her mother runs for president, the younger Clinton could be an asset in connecting with younger voters and members of her generation.
A longtime advocate for public health, Clinton has played an active role in developing policies at the foundation to address childhood obesity, HIV and AIDS, and childhood diarrhea around the globe.
During an appearance at the annual South by Southwest festival in March, Clinton noted that more than 750,000 children die around the world every year because of severe dehydration due to diarrhea, an issue her family’s foundation hopes to address.
“We have to do whatever we can to ensure that no child dies of diarrhea,” she said.
Clinton’s dissertation examines international global governance structures with a focus on global health. At the foundation, she has worked closely with the Alliance for a Healthier Generation and the Clinton Health Matters Initiative.
The younger Clinton, a special correspondent for NBC News, is a graduate of Stanford University and holds master’s degrees from Oxford and Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.
During an appearance on ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” in April, the former president noted that once his daughter receives her doctorate, she will have four degrees.
“She’ll have as many as her parents do — combined,” Bill Clinton said. “When she was younger, the way all kids are, she thought she knew more than I did about everything. But alas, in my dotage, it turned out to be true!”
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