If we’re going to ease divisions in our country, we’re going to have to solve this riddle: Why does our culture reward contempt when we value treating people with dignity?  

In 2009, during my final year as a city council member, I received a call inviting me to a hastily organized neighborhood meeting. It sounded important, so I dropped everything to attend.

In 1954, the Supreme Court ruled that segregated schools were unconstitutional, and just 8 years later, in 1962, the Court ruled that public schools could not offer prayer.  These two landmark decisions, combined with larger cultural shifts, placed schools in the middle of our country’s culture wars.

This past week, I spent a lot of time talking with my colleague Dr. Samantha Ball about the “dignity gap” – the dramatic finding from our Dignity Barometer, published last March.

Last month I visited Berlin for the first time. I expected to learn about history. Instead, I found myself learning from three small brass plaques embedded in a sidewalk…

It’s a special thrill to see an exceptional public speaker give one of her best speeches. I had that thrill last weekend when I saw Tami Pyfer make the link between Dignity and Democracy in her TED talk in Philadelphia.

My granddaughter, Isla, 5 years old, was sitting in front of the altar at church with her brother Francis, 7, who was about to receive his first communion. The priest was giving a short homily about the meaning of communion for the children when he asked, “Why do you think it says in the Bible that we need our ‘daily bread’?”

It’s beyond humbling to share the Dignity Index with passionate leaders from the Middle East living the reality of war. It reoriented me. And discussing what Dignity looks like when engaging with people who think just the opposite of you, especially when the stakes feel existential and urgent, requires an unlimited combination of courage, imagination, practicality, and more than a little humor—traits that were on full display by the leaders we met with last week in Greece.

On Monday, Pope Leo XIV released his first major teaching as Pope, an encyclical (or letter) entitled “Magnifica Humanitas,” or “Magnificent Humanity.” The topic? AI. The insight? Humanity is magnificent, not technology. The warning? We should all be worried. The advice? Disarm AI! 

In this space of our newsletter, we often talk about treating others with dignity. But you can’t truly honor someone else’s dignity unless you also honor your own. 

I don’t know anyone who isn’t trying to figure out how to limit and manage their smartphones. Doom scrolling, constant contempt, and endless distraction are tearing us apart. I’m reminded of the old TV series, “Get Smart,” where agent Maxwell Smart used his shoe for a phone. If only we all had to keep our phones in our shoes!

I’ve been spending time recently poring over old photos and scrapbook items in an attempt to organize decades of memories. As I read through a stack of newspaper clippings from my time in local public service, this letter to the editor caught my eye.

Over the last few days, I’ve found myself wanting to change many things. That urge overtakes me every time there’s political violence. When I was a kid and felt the sting of sudden horrific losses, I didn’t have the words to express myself. But I did long for things to be different.  

What is dignity?  

Can we see it in a laboratory, in an X-ray, in a brain scan?

Can we measure it, track it, manipulate it, or run tests on it?

How do we know what we claim to know – that violating dignity tears people apart, that honoring dignity can bring us back together?

In 1960, President-elect John F. Kennedy asked my Dad to create the Peace Corps.

For the following 4 years, my dad met with world leaders to ask them to welcome Peace Corps Volunteers, championed the power of young people to be peacemakers at home, built a broad bipartisan political coalition to support service to our country, and worked tirelessly to fulfill President Kennedy’s vision of a freer world.

For the past three weeks, I’ve spent more time on the road than at home—traveling across the country, speaking to groups about the Dignity Index, and inviting them to join the dignity movement. The travel can be exhausting, but the work is energizing. I feel lucky to engage with people who are working to heal divides in their communities, schools, workplaces, and families.

When I called Charlamagne tha God, the long-time host of “The Breakfast Club,” to share the new findings from the first-ever Dignity Barometer, he listened for a minute to the numbers. I told him that 94% of Americans believe we should treat each other with dignity. “Isn’t that amazing?” I said. “We’re always told that we are far apart on everything, but the Barometer proves we’re actually totally aligned on dignity.”  

In our first annual Dignity Barometer, Americans voice broad agreement: There is an urgent new issue in our country that’s almost as important to them as the cost of living: how we treat each other.  

When I visited West Point 18 months ago to teach cadets about our work in the dignity movement, I was worried that my message would be controversial.  

I found the opposite. The students welcomed me and were fascinated by the Dignity Index.