Chelsea Clinton gets PhD from Oxford: For what?

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!"

Chelsea's mother, Hillary was back in the news this week as House Republicans formed a special investigative panel on the 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya. At the time, Clinton was Secretary of State.

As The Christian Science Monitor reported: "The House approved the creation of a special Benghazi investigative panel Thursday on a largely party-line vote, leaving Democrats with a big question: To boycott? Or not to boycott?

House minority leader Nancy Pelosi (D) of California and other Democrats are furious over the creation of the Select Committee on Benghazi, which they consider to be a partisan witch hunt. They note that Republican campaign fundraising has already begun based on the new investigation.

___

Follow Ken Thomas on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ap_ken_thomas

Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.