Simpson College’s John C. Culver Public Policy Center welcomed American diplomat, attorney and activist, Victoria Reggie Kennedy, to campus Thursday, Nov. 6. Kennedy also served as the United States Ambassador to Austria from 2022 to 2025.
Ambassador Kennedy was full of answers for every question she was asked.
Kennedy is also the president and co-founder of Common Sense about Kids and Guns, an advocacy group which seeks to reduce gun deaths and injuries to children in the United States. She is also co-founder of Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate.
Kennedy is the widow of the longtime Senator Edward M. Kennedy, who shared decades of friendship with Senator John C. Culver. The two senators met on the Harvard University football team in the 1950s and continued their friendship throughout their lives.
“John Culver was someone my late husband deeply respected, and I admired him too,” Kennedy said. “ He lived his values. He believed that public service was a noble calling, and that’s exactly what this Center continues to teach.”
Because of the bond her husband shared with Senator Culver, Kennedy was thrilled to be welcomed to the Culver Center and see how Simpson has continued to embody the late senator’s passions.
Kennedy shared the stage with her longtime friend, and widow of Senator Culver, Mary Jane Checchi. Director of the John C. Culver Public Policy Center, Seth Anderson, said Checci is the spiritual godmother of the Culver Center.
Checchi asked Kennedy questions about her experience as an Ambassador to Austria during the pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“You are the representative of the President of the United States and the face of the United States in the country that you are sent to,” Kennedy said. “Austria walked a very fine line, but I think did a quite admirable job. They said, ‘We may be militarily neutral, but we’re not morally neutral, we’re not politically neutral. We stand on the side of the people with your friends.’”
Once Kennedy’s overall reflection on her four-year experience concluded, she offered advice to Simpson students and answered questions on what they should do to support diplomacy and democracy.
“The first thing you can do is vote,” Kennedy said. “Just get involved, find that one thing you care about and go for it. Then read everything you can. Be true to who you are. Find your own true compass. I believe in you. I would put my future in your hands. So you should believe in you.”
Kennedy even acknowledged the polarizing political environment in which we live and the discouragement it has brought to young voters. She, however, still emphasized the importance of young adults registering to vote as soon as they turn 18.
“I understand the frustration, because the politics you see play out publicly isn’t always pleasant,” Kennedy said. “But you have to make a plan to vote. People my age all know if they’re filling out an absentee ballot and where the early polls are. But young people, you’ve got to plan ahead. It’s your future, not mine.”
At the end of the night, Kennedy said the students she met at Simpson made her thoroughly impressed and hopeful for the future.
“What gives me hope is this: it’s you, it’s all the young people I’ve met here,” Kennedy said. “You’re engaged, you care, you’re involved, and that’s everything.”
The former ambassador currently lives in Boston, and although she didn’t share her future plans, she will continue to make an impact in the political world and continue her late husband’s legacy.
