A dignity movement
2026 Laetare Medalist Timothy Shriver
Laetare recipient Timothy Shriver reflects on faith, family, and the lifelong mission to ensure every person is seen with dignity
When Timothy Shriver was 3 years old, his mother launched a summer camp in their backyard.
To his delight, children arrived by the busload to swim, play kickball, and shoot baskets at their home in Maryland. The highlight each year was when the ponies arrived.
Shriver's early childhood was profoundly shaped by the memories and friendships he made with the campers. But it wasn't until years later that he realized that those fun-filled summer days were the start of a global movement.
His mother, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, created Camp Shriver in the early 1960s as an outlet for children with intellectual and developmental disabilities who had nowhere to go in the summers—nowhere they could be both accepted and encouraged to grow, play, and thrive.
“Imagine you're 5 or 6 years old and you have a new best friend and you get to have pony rides in your backyard. It was a bonanza of excitement,” Shriver said. “It instilled in me an orientation to difference that didn't see difference as a liability or a weakness to be overcome, but rather a joy to be celebrated.”
Camp Shriver, an instant success, paved the way for Eunice Kennedy Shriver to found Special Olympics in 1968.
Now the longest-serving chairman of the Special Olympics International board of directors, Timothy Shriver is being honored for his work with the Laetere Medal, considered the most prestigious award given exclusively to American Catholics.
From the beginning, Shriver said, the organization has had a tremendous impact, not only on its athletes, but on everyone involved—from the very first high school students who volunteered as counselors at Camp Shriver.
“My mother's passion was exploring the power of sport to transform not just the lives of children with intellectual challenges, but the perceptions of all of us,” he said. “The teenage camp counselors were there to help, yes, but also because she believed she could change their view and that they would see differently for the rest of their lives. These volunteers from the 1960s are still around, and they still tell the stories of how life-changing it was to accompany a camper, to realize how gifted these campers were, and how wrong the world had it.”
As chairman of Special Olympics, Shriver has driven the organization's largest expansion in its history. Under his leadership, Special Olympics—now a global movement to end discrimination against people with intellectual disabilities through programming in sports, health, education, and inclusive leadership—has grown from 1 million athletes to more than 4 million athletes in more than 200 countries and territories around the world.
“I look at the work of the last half century of the Special Olympics movement as largely shifting the lens from, ‘What's wrong with them?' to ‘How much can we accomplish if it's us, not us versus them? If we're all seen as equally gifted, as opposed to some being better than others?'” he said. “These were all lessons that were taught to me very early in life, and I'm grateful for them.”
A family legacy
Established at the University of Notre Dame in 1883, the Laetare Medal was conceived as an American counterpart of the Golden Rose, a papal honor that antedates the 11th century. Past Laetare recipients include Catholic Worker founder Dorothy Day, novelist Walker Percy, and CEO of Feeding America Claire Babineaux-Fontenot.
“I know I don't belong in the company of many of the people who have received this medal,” Shriver said. “I think it's being given to me as a placeholder for the people who are doing the work every day. It's being given to me so that the athlete who's in a refugee camp in Tanzania running 50 meters this afternoon will somehow know that the world is paying attention, and so that his mom at the finish line will know that her son matters. I'm a good channel for people who deserve it, and I'm grateful to be able to be that channel.”
Shriver's connection to the Laetare Medal is also deeply personal. He is the only medalist in Notre Dame history whose parents were both recipients as well. Eunice Kennedy Shriver received the Laetare Medal in 1988 for her own work with Special Olympics, and Timothy Shriver's father, Robert Sargent Shriver, was the 1968 Laetare Medalist in recognition of his work in founding the Peace Corps. Timothy Shriver's uncle, President John F. Kennedy, also received the medal in 1961.
2026 Laetare Medalist Timothy Shriver talks with University President Rev. Robert A. Dowd, C.S.C., at the Notre Dame Washington Office.
Their dedication to social activism, public service, and philanthropy was instilled in the next generation early on, Shriver said.
“I grew up in a large and lively Catholic family. We were five kids, with almost three dozen cousins, aunts, and uncles. And we were all together quite a lot, for summers, sports, and recreation, but also political campaigns, social justice efforts, and programs for Peace Corps volunteers or the Special Olympics,” he said. “There were always dozens of us, and there was always a very simple message, which was, ‘It's very serious and important to make a difference, and it's also very serious and important to have fun.'”
Their endeavors were always informed by their Catholic faith, he continued.
“My parents were daily communicants. They went to Mass every day, usually my dad in the morning and my mom in the afternoon. So our faith tradition was a very important part of our upbringing, not so much that we talked about it, but that we believed deeply in the responsibility and in the exhortation to see the world as ours to make in the image and likeness of God.
“My parents took for granted that we all had a gift—the gift of life at its most basic level—and that to use that gift in a way that mattered in the eyes of God was the most important work of our lives.”
A great, global classroom
As Shriver grew, his relationship with the burgeoning Special Olympics program evolved as well. He began volunteering for the organization as a teen, planning track and field events at his high school, and continued volunteering throughout his undergraduate years at Yale University and once he'd entered the job market.
“It was seamless. The Special Olympics movement has been a part of my life from the age of 3, pretty much uninterruptedly, until now,” he said. “That's a lot of years.”
Although Shriver grew up watching family members embrace the political stage, he felt called to pursue a career in education—where he hoped to effect change on a more personal level. After completing a bachelor's degree at Yale, he began working for the Upward Bound program and then as a public school teacher.
Through Upward Bound, Shriver began working with disadvantaged children, conducting home visits, working to strengthen their academic performance, taking them on college visits, and exposing them to career opportunities. He loved the work, but was quickly humbled by the challenges they faced and his own limitations.
“I realized how inadequate my capacity was to make a difference in their enormously complicated lives,” he said. “They were struggling with the effects of poverty, racism, lack of opportunity. And there I was, at 22 years old, saying, ‘No, no, do your homework.' I realized on some level that what those kids wanted from me was not the knowledge I'd learned in studying history or grammar, but whether or not I had the capacity to look them in the eye and say, ‘I see you. I understand you.' And the truth was, I didn't know how to do that.”
As he navigated those first years, Shriver found a mentor who helped him learn how to connect with students on a deeper level—and ultimately change the field of education. He received a fellowship to study child development with James Comer at the Yale Child Study Center, whose research focused on the importance of strengthening relational trust.
Following that experience, Shriver helped launch the field of social and emotional learning (SEL) by leading the New Haven Social Development program, which pioneered SEL strategies across K–12 classrooms. Building on the program's success, Shriver cofounded the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) at Yale in 1994 and chairs its board of directors.
“I became focused on the emotional development of children, the social relationships between children and adults, and how improving those relationships could translate into academic and behavior improvements,” he said. “And all of a sudden, my whole world opened up, and we built a whole field. It was just a few of us at the time, but we said, ‘This is it. This is what's missing.'”
Shriver, who also earned a master's degree from Catholic University and a doctoral degree in education from the University of Connecticut, joined the Special Olympics movement in 1996 and currently serves as chairman. Although it was hard for him to leave education, he said it struck him that Special Olympics is, at its heart, a “great, global classroom.”
“My parents never retired. They loved their work; they loved the Special Olympics movement. So my mom and dad were not looking to hand off the torch. They just wanted someone to help carry it,” he said. “Most of all, I think they wanted confidence that whoever was going to lead the movement into the future understood it. And we have tried to maintain that same vision—to see the dignity of every human being and to stay focused on what matters most, which is that every child who comes into this movement deserves to be treated with dignity and hope and justice and joy. Give them a chance, every one, no exceptions.”
As CEO of Special Olympics, Shriver expanded the organization's global reach and sought to enhance the quality of life for millions of people with intellectual disabilities by creating new initiatives in athletic leadership, health services, and education development.
To date, the Healthy Athletes initiative, launched in 1997, has provided free health care screenings to more than 2 million athletes in more than 135 countries. And the Special Olympics Unified Sports initiative, which began in the 1980s and was significantly expanded under his leadership, brings together athletes with and without intellectual disabilities on the same playing field to promote a culture of inclusion.
The largest obstacle Shriver works to overcome, he said, is cynicism.
“When I was a teacher in a large public high school with largely low-income and minority students, people would say to me, ‘Oh, I can't believe you go there with those kids or to that neighborhood.' That cynicism created so many of the challenges those kids faced. And when you look at children with special needs, still today, there's a certain cynicism, or fear, or stigma that leads to exclusion, judgment, and marginalization. That's the obstacle. It's not the child.”
A good listener
For Adam Hays, who joined Special Olympics as an athlete in 1995, the organization has given him a chance to take on leadership roles—and to show the world that his disability does not define him.
Hays not only competes in cycling, soccer, basketball, alpine skiing, swimming, and tennis events, but also serves on the board of directors for Special Olympics Maryland and as chairperson of the Athlete Leadership Council for Maryland.
And as a health messenger in the Healthy Athletes initiative, he works to educate his fellow athletes on living a healthy lifestyle—and works with medical professionals and medical students to educate them on how to work with people with intellectual disabilities.
“If you asked 11-year-old me, I'd be like, ‘I'm still learning how to play soccer, and I'm kind of shy, and I don't really know what Special Olympics is,'” Hays said. “Now, here I am getting to do a lot of really cool things. It's helped me become more confident, more aware of all the amazing things that I'm capable of doing. And these things don't just help me, but help share the strengths of people with intellectual disabilities all throughout the world.”
Hays, who served as a torch bearer for the Special Olympics World Games in Athens in 2011, has known Shriver for more than 20 years.
“He's a very good listener. Just today, when I came in, he stopped and talked to me, and wanted to hear all about all the exciting things I've been doing and my fellow athletes have been doing since I last saw him,” he said. “And that seems to happen every time I see Tim. It just makes me feel like we're good friends by getting to talk about whatever.”
Hays said it means the world to him that Special Olympics is part of his life.
“I want people to always know that having someone like Tim there, and anyone that is within the movement, you're helping my fellow athletes to show that we're living like anyone else and just want to be treated like anyone else in society. And I'm doing that.”
A remarkable leader
Most recently, Shriver has begun focusing on how the same principles that form the foundations of Special Olympics and SEL could be used to help people bridge political divides. In 2018, he cofounded UNITE, a nonprofit dedicated to this effort.
“Tim and I had known each other for a couple years when he came to me and said, ‘I'm launching an organization. When can you start?'” said Tom Rosshirt, now chief strategist and director of research for UNITE. “His ambition was to ease the divisions in the country. And that was all we started with. But it was built on the whole history and experience of his time with Special Olympics.
“Tim has been embodying this desire to understand the dignity of every human being from the very start of his life, and it's just continued to expand to all people everywhere.”
Following the creation of UNITE, Shriver, Rosshirt, and Tami Pyfer turned their attention to the language that we use when we're in disagreement. Together, they co-created the Dignity Index, an eight-point scale to help people understand when they're responding with contempt or respect to those with other views.
“We realized it's not our disagreements that divide us, but it's how we treat each other in those moments of conflict and disagreement,” said Pyfer, UNITE's chief impact officer. “That's why we developed the Dignity Index.”
The Dignity Index launched in fall 2022 and went national in 2023. The UNITE team now works with politicians, educators, faith leaders, and corporations across the country to share their message.
“Tim has this quality about him, this childlike faith, and this ability to see the good in everyone,” Pyfer said. “And when you work with Tim or you meet him, that shines through, and people feel seen by him—which then leads them to understand our message better, to be inspired by the message.
“It's this hope that he has for the country, and the ability to bring others into these conversations, that makes him a remarkable leader, a remarkable individual.”
Looking back, Shriver sees that desire to recognize the inherent dignity in everyone as the throughline of his career.
“That faith that every human being has dignity is the most important thing. The Peace Corps is a dignity movement. The Special Olympics is a dignity movement. Social and emotional learning is part of a dignity movement, and so is Mothers Against Drunk Driving and the Lions Club. Human dignity is in our lives in lots of different ways, but we don't always have the language to capture it.
“So that's where we've landed—on a dignity movement. I believe the athletes of Special Olympics, just like those students I had when I was in my 20s, are asking in their own way, ‘Do you see me? Do you understand my struggle, my life? Do you believe that I'm a good person as I am?' They stand in front of the world, getting their medal after running the 100-meter dash and putting their arms up in the air. And it's almost like a question: Do you see me? I'm here. I'm a winner. Do you see this child? A winner?
“And I just want to spend whatever time I've got left trying to answer that question. Yes, I see you. We see your dignity. It's beautiful.”