Mohammed bin Nayef

Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, who was injured in a suicide bomb attack in 2009, has worked with the U.S. on measures to fight al-Qaida and has won American plaudits for his work to counter threats from the terror group.

(Hassan Ammar/AP/2012)

Update: Lewis & Clark College issued a press release Jan. 30 to clarify that although Mohammed Bin Nayef attended the college in the late 1970s, he did not earn a degree.



The new deputy crown prince of Saudi Arabia graduated from Portland's Lewis & Clark College in 1981 with a bachelor's degree in political science, according to reports in the New York Times and Washington Post.

Mohammed bin Nayef is the grandson of Saudi Arabia's founder, King Abdul-Aziz Al Saud, and the first member of his generation to reach the upper echelons of the ruling family.

Greg Caldwell, who was associate dean of students at Lewis & Clark College from 1976 to 2011, said Mohammed was a student in at least one of the English as a Second Language classes that Caldwell taught.

"He was a very nice young man, very humble," Caldwell said. "He was a good student. He worked pretty hard."

"I remember he was very polite," Caldwell said. "I simply called him Mohammed. It wasn't like we addressed him as the prince or something like that."

Caldwell added that the young prince got along well with his fellow students and would sometimes give them rides in his car.

The prince was also a student at Portland State University in the summer of 1980, according to university officials.

After college, Mohammed returned to his homeland and began a career in the family business, ruling Saudi Arabia. In 2009, he was injured in a suicide bomb attack. He has worked with the U.S. on measures to fight al-Qaida and has won American plaudits for his work to counter threats from the terror group.

On Friday, King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz al Saud became king after the death of his half-brother, King Abdullah. Salman issued a royal decree affirming Crown Prince Muqrin as his immediate successor, and Prince Muqrin named Mohammed as deputy crown prince, making him second in line to the throne.

Prince Mohammed comes from a very large royal family. His grandfather had 45 sons born of 22 wives.

If the line of succession holds, Mohammed, who was born in 1959, will one day become the first Saudi ruler who isn't a son of the kingdom's founder. King Abdul-Aziz, known as Ibn Saud, died in 1953 and all six subsequent kings, including Salman, have been his children.

Emad Mostaque, a strategist at Ecstrat in London, said it is "very positive that they've handled possible transition to the next generation with aplomb and that's likely a key reason oil prices are stabilizing," he said.

Abdullah, born in 1924 and buried in Riyadh on Friday, began moving younger princes into senior government positions after unprecedented regional instability started toppling leaders across the Middle East in 2011.

The younger generation will eventually change the kingdom, paying more attention to how it's perceived in the outside world, said Fahad Nazer of JTG Inc., a consultancy based in Vienna, Va.

"Their western education, and likely deeper understanding of the vastly different and continually changing media environment, will most likely manifest itself in a different kind of Saudi ruler," Nazer, who has worked as a political analyst for the Saudi embassy in the U.S, said by e-mail.

-- The Associated Press, Boomberg News Service and reporter Amy Wang of The Oregonian/Oregonlive contributed to this report.