Timothy Shriver is Connect 351’s Friday keynote speaker

Timothy Shriver, chair of the Special Olympics and a nonprofit leader working to restore dignity to the national conversation, will be a keynote speaker during the MMA’s Connect 351 conference on Friday, Jan. 23, in Boston.

As CEO and founder of UNITE, Shriver co-created the Dignity Index, a tool that scores political speech along a continuum ranging from dignity to contempt and helps political leaders and citizens rethink the language they use to describe people with opposing views.

At Connect 351, he will discuss his organization’s work, the contempt that he says is poisoning civic life, and the ways people can bridge divisions and see each other’s humanity.

In interviews, Shriver says reversing unchecked contempt is “our nation’s most urgent priority.” He has identified numerous dynamics that are unraveling public cohesion, including fractious elections, divisive social media algorithms, partisan politics and news outlets, rapid social change, and a decrease in social connection through civic, community and faith-based organizations.

“When you don’t have the institutions, and you have a lot of toxins coming at you, it’s kind of like a perfect storm,” Shriver said on a November 2024 episode of the podcast “For the Love With Jen Hatmaker.” “There’s not one single thing that’s made us struggle. But the one single thing that we can do about it is to recognize that contempt for each other is the problem, and treating each other with dignity is the solution.”

UNITE works with political leaders, school districts, colleges and universities, businesses and others to help ease divisions, prevent violence, and solve problems. Earlier this year, the nonprofit partnered with the University of Utah to promote the study, teaching and practice of dignity. UNITE and the university previously worked together in 2022, to score the political speech in Utah’s midterm congressional races.

Shriver created the Dignity Index in 2021 with Tom Rosshirt and Tami Pyfer (who will be the keynote speaker at Connect 351’s Women Elected Municipal Officials Leadership Luncheon on Jan. 23 in Boston).

The eight-point index measures speech according to how much it does, or doesn’t, embrace the humanity of people from different groups or opposing views. Speech that scores five or higher reaches toward dignity, while speech registering at four or below pushes toward contempt.

Shriver draws his insights from an extensive career in public service, which includes serving as CEO of the Special Olympics, working as a public school teacher, and producing numerous films. He cofounded and chairs the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning, sits on the boards of numerous organizations, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is the author of a bestselling book about his experiences, “Fully Alive: Discovering What Matters Most.”

Shriver, a nephew of the late President John F. Kennedy and U.S. senators Robert F. Kennedy and Ted Kennedy, grew up watching his parents work to improve American society. His mother, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, founded the Special Olympics, and his father, Sargent Shriver, a one-time vice presidential candidate who served as a U.S. ambassador to France, helped found the Peace Corps.

“These were really extraordinary experiences as I look back,” Shriver said on Hatmaker’s podcast. “Of course at the time I thought, this was my mom and dad, and this is what we do. But they were inviting me into a world in which the joyful — and I often come back to this word, ‘joyful’ — there was a sense in which to make the world better, more just, more hopeful — it was a joyful pursuit. It wasn’t a burden.”

For many, however, that joyful pursuit is being strained by the hostilities that often overtake public discussion. In a November 2024 opinion piece for Newsweek, Shriver cited an American Psychological Association study that identified election anxiety as the top cause of mental distress, furthering isolation and damaging friendships and familial bonds. He echoed the sentiment when speaking on the PBS NewsHour in May.

“We’re in an us-versus-them country, or an us-or-them country,” Shriver said. “And that level of despair about our capacity to solve problems and heal, is what leads to increases in violence, the risk of family division, mine included, that have been torn apart by this level of contempt, this surround sound of judgment and dehumanization.”

Still, Shriver expresses optimism about the future of dignity. Many people are already doing the work of dignity, he said on Hatmaker’s podcast, and it’s important to focus on them as well.

“The discouraged American story is not the real story of us,” Shriver said.