Alex Stubbe ’93 H’17 was seen at the 2017 graduation ceremony and was elected President of Finland on February 11, 2024.
Finns have gone to the polls in recent weeks, and on Sunday, February 11th, on a partly sunny day with temperatures reaching 16 degrees Fahrenheit in Helsinki, Furman Paladin Alex Stubbe (’93-’17) Selected. Their next president.
Mr Stubb, a member of the mainstream centre-right National Union party, won 51.6% of the vote, beating his opponent Pekka Haavisto in the run-off. Haavisto, Finland’s current foreign minister and member of the center-left Green Party, won 48.4% of the vote.
Mr. Stubbe’s main duties during his six-year term as president will be to oversee foreign and security policy, represent the country in NATO, and serve as commander-in-chief of his country’s military. Brent Nelsen, Jane Fishburne Hipp Professor of Politics and International Studies at Furman University, said Finland has a “semi-presidential system with a president with real power and a party-led parliament.”
Mr. Stubb is the first Furman University graduate to serve as head of state. As his commencement speaker in 2017, he explained that he came to Furman because his older brother was studying there. He initially wanted to study business, but soon became interested in political science.
Alex Stubb ’93 H’17 and 2017 graduate.
“Alex Stubbe is a tremendous leader,” said Furman University President Elizabeth Davis. “He is a charming and very inquisitive person with a strong moral compass to always do what is best for his fellow man. I am very happy for him and very proud of him. He will be a great president for his home country of Finland.”
Regarding Stubb’s selection, Nelsen said: We always knew Alex was going to be all over the place. When he was Prime Minister, he thought he was at the top and was probably going to be elected as Commissioner of the European Union. ”
Mr. Nelsen said there were no major policy differences between Mr. Stubbe and Mr. Haavist. The country recently joined NATO, a move Mr. Stubb had long supported and, as foreign minister, Mr. Haavisto brokered. Both countries are firmly opposed to Russia and its invasion of Ukraine. Finland is a country of just over 5 million people, smaller than the Atlanta metropolitan area, and shares more than 832 miles of border with Russia. Finland has closed its borders in recent months to curb mass immigration from Russia.
Nelsen said Stubb’s advantage is his long experience in the Finnish government. Mr. Stubbe served as Prime Minister of Finland from 2014 to 2015, a role that focused primarily on domestic policy. Mr. Stubbe has also served as Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of Finance, as well as a member of the European Parliament. From 2017 to 2020 he served as Vice President of the European Investment Bank.
He is very sociable and personable. He quickly took to social media and gained many followers with his posts about participating in triathlons. And he is seen as a family man, which Nelsen said is appealing to relatively conservative Finns.
Nelsen, who taught Stubb in several classes in the 1990s and co-authored a textbook with him, said Stubb has always been supportive of Fuhrman. He talked a lot about his own career in this Furman Magazine article. Overseas, Stubbe took time to meet with students several times when Nelsen took student groups to Brussels and Italy. Mr. Fuhrman thanked Professors Bill Lavery, Nelsen, Ty Tessitore, Don Gordon, and Jim Gass at the 2017 commencement ceremony for awarding Mr. Stubb an honorary Doctor of Philosophy degree. “They were the ones who instilled in me the concepts of curiosity, scholarship, and a love of learning,” he said. He called graduating from Furman University one of the proudest moments of his life. “If it weren’t for Furman and his professors, I wouldn’t be standing here,” he said.
After Furman, Stubbe studied at the Sorbonne in Paris and earned a master’s degree at the European University in Bruges, where he met his wife, Suzanne. He then earned a PhD in International Relations from the London School of Economics.
Mr Stubb will be sworn in as President of Finland on March 1 in Helsinki.