Chelsea Clinton

Some Lesser Known Facts About Chelsea Clinton

• Chelsea Clinton was named after the 1969 Judy Collins recording of the Joni Mitchell Song- Chelsea Morning, which his father, Bill Clinton, heard during the 1978 Christmas vacation in London.

• Her father is a Southern Baptist, however, she was raised as a Methodist as her mother is a Methodist.

• When Chelsea Clinton was born, her father, Bill Clinton, was the Governor of Arkansas.

• Chelsea Clinton skipped the third grade and learnt to invest in the stock market when she was only 11.

• After reading an article about the adverse effects of red meat, she became a strict vegetarian.

• Chelsea Clinton became popular in the American Media after touring India in April 1995 with her mother.

  

• In 2015, she was featured on the cover of the Elle magazine.

  

• She is the vice chairman of the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Health Access Initiative.

• Chelsea Clinton serves on many boards including Partners in Health, The Africa Center, Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, the School of American Ballet, IAC, and Expedia.

• She is the co-founder of both HiddenLight Productions and Metrodora Ventures.

• Her parents, Bill and Hillary, chose her name after hearing the song “Chelsea Morning” by Joni Mitchell during their trip to London in 1978.

• When she was two, Chelsea Clinton began joining her parents on various political campaign trips around Arkansas when her father was contesting for the position of governor.

• She learned to read and write at a young age and began reading newspapers at three.

• When she was five, Chelsea Clinton wrote a letter to President Ronald Reagan. In the letter, she asked President Reagan not to visit a military cemetery in Germany with Nazi soldiers’ graves.

• In 1992, her father became the president of the USA, and she remained active in school activities until the family moved to Washington.

• Chelsea Clinton played the role of a Ghost of Christmas Past in a school production of A Christmas Carol and danced in Little Rock’s production of The Nutcracker.

• She was raised in her father’s Southern Baptist faith as a child.

• Chelsea Clinton moved into the White House with her parents after her father’s first inauguration in January 1993. She was given the Secret Service codename ‘Energy’ in that month.

• Reportedly, her parents aimed to give her a normal childhood and protect her from media attention.

• Her mother, Hillary Clinton, followed advice from Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis on how to raise children in the White House and asked the press to limit coverage of Chelsea to her public events.

• In 1993, Margaret Truman, daughter of former president Harry S. Truman, supported the Clintons and wrote a letter to The New York Times in March about the possible harm of harsh media coverage on Chelsea.

• After attending Horace Mann Magnet Middle School in Little Rock, Chelsea was taken out of public school and enrolled in Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C.

• She participated in Model United Nations (MUN) and was a semifinalist for the 1997 National Merit Scholarship.

• Chelsea Clinton graduated from Sidwell in 1997, and her father, Bill Clinton, delivered a speech at her graduation ceremony.

• During her father’s working tenure in the White House, there was debate among journalists about whether Chelsea Clinton should have privacy. Most media outlets agreed that she should be left alone because of her age. However, some media persons and outlets such as Rush Limbaugh and Saturday Night Live made fun of her appearance.

• In early 1999, the Clintons found out that People magazine was planning to write an article about Chelsea’s relationship with her parents during President Clinton’s impeachment.

• The Secret Service was worried about the article’s impact on Chelsea’s safety, but People magazine published it. Soon after the article was published, Bill and Hillary Clinton expressed their disappointment with the magazine’s decision.

• After that, People magazine’s managing editor defended the article “Grace Under Fire” and argued that Chelsea, then 19, was a valid journalistic subject because she witnessed family drama and historical events.

• The article featured a cover photo of Chelsea and Hillary.

  

• When her father was serving as the President of the USA, there were 32 stories about Chelsea Clinton published in The New York Times. There were 87 other network news stories prevailing about her.

• One author found that she received the most television coverage of any presidential child before her. She and Maureen Reagan spent a full eight years as presidential children in the White House.

• In the last year of her father’s presidency, Chelsea took on some White House hostess duties when her mother was campaigning for the U.S. Senate. She travelled with her father on overseas trips and attended state dinners with him.

• Chelsea Clinton was raised in her mother’s Methodist faith, as her father is a Southern Baptist.

• As a teenager, she attended the youth ministry group at Foundry United Methodist Church in Washington, where her parents sometimes joined her. The group leaders often praised her as an ‘amazing kid’ who was treated equally as others.

• Chelsea Clinton started dance classes at age four in Arkansas. She continued her dance training at the Washington School of Ballet.

  

• In 1993, she played the role of the Favorite Aunt in the Washington Ballet’s production of Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker.

• Before she started attending Stanford University in 1997, her mother wrote an open letter to the journalists and asked them to respect Chelsea’s privacy.

• When Chelsea Clinton arrived at Stanford, she was accompanied by her parents, Secret Service agents, and many journalists. Her security measures included the bullet-proof glass in her dorm windows and surveillance cameras. These were implemented for her safety. Reportedly, some Secret Service agents lived in her dorm.

• Chelsea’s time at Stanford University remained mostly private. In 2001, she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history with honours, and the topic of her thesis was the 1998 Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland.

• Chelsea Clinton then pursued a master’s degree at University College, Oxford, and followed her father’s footsteps.

• During her studies at Oxford, due to security reasons, the university took measures to protect her privacy, and her fellow students were asked not to discuss her with the press.

• After the September 11 attacks, Chelsea Clinton bonded with other American students at Oxford who were also affected emotionally by the tragedy.

• After that Chelsea Clinton faced criticism for the remarks she made in the London press and the Oxford Student newspaper. Her remarks upset the university.

• Reportedly, people who met Chelsea Clinton during her time in Oxford described her as charming, poised, and unaffected, as she adapted well to life abroad.

• In 2003, she earned a Master of Philosophy degree in international relations from Oxford University. Her thesis focused on The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria. After graduating, she returned to the United States.

• In 2010, Chelsea Clinton completed a Master of Public Health degree at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.

• She pursued Doctor of Philosophy coursework at New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service before transferring back to University College, Oxford, in 2011 to complete her Ph.D. in International Relations.

• Chelsea Clinton completed her dissertation in New York City and was awarded her Ph.D. in May 2014. Her dissertation was titled The Global Fund: An Experiment in Global Governance.

• In 2012, she received an award from the Temple of Understanding for her work in integrating interfaith and cross-cultural education into campus life along with Imam Khalid Latif and Rabbi Yehuda Sarna.

• In 2012, Chelsea Clinton began working as an Assistant Professor at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, New York.