The keynote speaker at NYU Abu Dhabi’s inaugural commencement ceremony will be President Bill Clinton, the 42nd president of the United States and founder of the Clinton Foundation. The announcement was posted on the Student Portal by NYUAD’s Department of Public Affairs on March 13.

Clinton served as president of the United States from 1993 to 2001 and has since been actively involved in global philanthropic and development initiatives via The Clinton Foundation.

Clinton received an honorary degree from New York University in 2011, where he spoke before that year’s graduating class in New York’s Yankee Stadium.

NYUAD senior Abhishek Mehra expressed excitement about having Clinton speak, since the former U.S. president is a prominent global figure.

“Who doesn’t know Bill Clinton?” said Mehra. “Because we’re so diverse, it’s good to have someone who people from all over the world would recognize.”

He added that he felt as though President Clinton would help bolster the credibility of the new campus.

“I feel it’s really good for our class and the people who will be graduating after us,” Mehra said. “Having someone this popular is definitely going to put us on the map.”

The keynote speaker at the commencement of the New York campus’ commencement will be Janet Yellen, chair of the Federal Reserve System, the central banking system of the United States government. Yellen is the first woman to hold this position and the position’s first Democratic nominee since 1979.

NYU New York senior Dylan Maurer has spent his final two years of university as a Residential Advisor in Abu Dhabi, and will be attending commencement both in Yankee Stadium and on Saadiyat Island. He said he was looking forward to seeing both Yellen’s speech as well as the other honorary degree recipients, including U.S. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan and award-winning artist Aretha Franklin.

“I feel like we in New York have a great speaker [as well as] a great list of honorary degree recipients and so that’s very exciting,” said Maurer.

But he said he was glad to be attending NYUAD’s commencement.

“I’m also excited by Bill Clinton as the speaker for Abu Dhabi because I feel like he has a good relationship with the university. He’s familiar with the university itself and he has a good relationship with John Sexton, and so I feel like he will do a fantastic job at speaking to this class ... He has a good understanding of what the GNU is trying to become.”