Chelsea Victoria Clinton (born February 27, 1980) is an American writer. She is the only child of former U.S. President Bill Clinton and former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Clinton was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, during her father's first term as governor of Arkansas. She attended public schools there until her father was elected president and the family moved to the White House, when she began attending the private Sidwell Friends School. Clinton received an undergraduate degree at Stanford University, later earning master's degrees from University of Oxford and Columbia University and a Doctor of Philosophy in international relations from the University of Oxford in 2014.
In 2007 and 2008, Clinton campaigned extensively on American college campuses for her mother's Democratic presidential nomination bid and introduced her at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. She assumed a similar role in her mother's 2016 presidential campaign, making more than 200 public appearances as her surrogate and again introducing her at the Democratic National Convention.
Clinton has worked for McKinsey & Company, Avenue Capital Group, Columbia University, New York University, and NBC. She serves on several boards, including the board of the Clinton Foundation. Clinton has authored and co-authored best-selling children's non-fiction books and has co-authored a scholarly book for adults on global health policy.
Chelsea Victoria Clinton was born in Little Rock, Arkansas on February 27, 1980. She is the only child of Hillary and Bill Clinton. Her name was inspired by a visit to the Chelsea neighborhood of London during a Christmas 1978 vacation. Hillary said that upon hearing the 1969 Judy Collins recording of the Joni Mitchell song "Chelsea Morning", Bill remarked, "If we ever have a daughter, her name should be Chelsea".
When Clinton was two years old, she accompanied her parents as they campaigned throughout Arkansas for her father's gubernatorial race. She learned to read and write at a very young age. Clinton claims that she started reading the newspaper by the age of three and also wrote a letter to President Ronald Reagan when she was only five. In the letter, which was photocopied and preserved by her father, she asked President Reagan not to visit a military cemetery in West Germany that includes graves of Nazi soldiers. Clinton attended Forest Park Elementary School, Booker Arts and Science Magnet Elementary School and Horace Mann Junior High School, both Little Rock public schools. She skipped the third grade. In 1992, Clinton's father was first elected president, and she remained active at school right until the family's move to Washington, playing the Ghost of Christmas Past in her school's production of A Christmas Carol and dancing in Little Rock's production of The Nutcracker. As a young child, Clinton was raised in her father's Southern Baptist faith.
Chelsea moved into the White House with her parents and was given the Secret Service codename "Energy" on the day of her father's first inauguration in January 1993. Her parents wanted her to have a normal childhood, and they hoped to shield her from the media spotlight.
Hillary Clinton followed the advice of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis on raising children in the White House, and asked the press to limit coverage of Chelsea to her participation in public events such as state visits. Margaret Truman, daughter of former president Harry S. Truman, supported the Clintons, and in March 1993 wrote a letter to the editor of The New York Times about the damage that could be done if the press made Chelsea a subject of intense coverage.
Following her attendance at Horace Mann Magnet Middle School in Little Rock, the Clintons decided to remove Chelsea from public school and send her to Sidwell Friends School, a private school in Washington, D.C. A veteran of Model United Nations, Clinton was a 1997 National Merit Scholarship semifinalist. She graduated from Sidwell in 1997; her father spoke at the graduation ceremony. Media speculation regarding her choice of college resulted in heavy press coverage. She ultimately chose to attend Stanford University.
Throughout her father's time in the White House, journalists debated the issue of allowing Clinton to retain her privacy. Most media outlets concluded that she should be off-limits due to her age, although Rush Limbaugh and Saturday Night Live both broadcast material mocking her appearance. During this phase of her life, her father said, "We really work hard on making sure that Chelsea doesn't let other people define her sense of her own self-worth ... It's tough when you are an adolescent ... but I think she'll be ok."
In early 1999, the Clintons learned of an article being planned by People that examined Chelsea's relationship with her parents in the wake of the impending vote on President Clinton's impeachment. The Secret Service told the magazine they had concerns that the story could compromise Chelsea's security. People ran the story anyway, and Bill and Hillary issued a statement expressing their disappointment. Carol Wallace, People's managing editor, felt that Chelsea, then 19, was "an eyewitness to family drama and historical events" and thus "a valid journalistic subject". The article, entitled "Grace Under Fire", was published in February 1999 with a cover photo of Chelsea and Hillary.
During her father's eight years in office, there were 32 stories in The New York Times and 87 network news stories about Chelsea. One author determined that she had received the most television coverage of all presidential children preceding her, although they noted that only she and Maureen Reagan had a full eight years as presidential children. During the last year of her father's presidency, Chelsea assumed some White House hostess responsibilities when her mother was campaigning for the U.S. Senate, traveling with her father on several overseas trips and attending state dinners with him.
Although her father was a Southern Baptist, Clinton was raised in and adheres to her mother's Methodist faith. As a teenager, she attended the youth ministry group at Foundry United Methodist Church in Washington, where her parents sometimes joined her. An adult group leader thought Clinton to be "a terrific kid" and observed that she was treated as an equal in the group.
At age four, Clinton had begun taking dance classes in Arkansas, and she continued her dance training at the Washington School of Ballet for several years. She was cast in the role of the Favorite Aunt in the 1993 Washington Ballet production of Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker.
Clinton entered Stanford University in the fall of 1997. The week before she arrived on campus, her mother published an open letter in her syndicated column asking journalists to leave her daughter alone. Chelsea arrived at Stanford in a motorcade with her parents, Secret Service agents, and almost 250 journalists. For her security, bullet-proof glass was installed in her dorm windows and surveillance cameras were placed in hallways. Secret Service agents in plain clothes lived in her dorm. With the exception of an occasional tabloid story written about her, Chelsea's four years at Stanford remained out of public view.
Clinton obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in history, with highest honors, at Stanford in 2001. The topic of her 167-page senior thesis was the 1998 Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland.
Starting in 2001, Chelsea pursued a master's degree at University College of the University of Oxford where her father had studied politics as a Rhodes Scholar. Upon the recommendation of British and American advisers, the university implemented security measures, and fellow students were asked not to discuss her with the press.
Arriving at Oxford just after the September 11 attacks, Clinton was drawn to other American students who were also feeling the emotional after-effects of the trauma. She told Talk magazine:Every day I encounter some sort of anti-American feeling. Over the summer, I thought I would seek out non-Americans as friends, just for diversity's sake. Now I find that I want to be around Americans—people who I know are thinking about our country as much as I am.