Moment’s Big Question project, established in 2010, is based on the ancient saying from Ethics of Our Fathers, Pirkei Avot: “Who is wise? One who learns from everyone.”

It is a way of moving beyond old-school debates that too often shoehorn complex questions into a simplified form, debates that push people into polarizing positions and are an ineffective way to address complicated issues.

The Big Question project instead uses a broader lens to tackle big questions that present a spectrum of nuanced voices on issues critical to public discourse—from politics to culture to religion. Its range of creative thinkers and doers create conversation that incorporate wisdom and multiple points of view.

Project participants have included:

• Madeleine Albright, former Secretary of State

• Ruth Bader Ginsburg, former U.S. Supreme Court Justice

• Larry Brilliant, epidemiologist who led successful effort to eradicated smallpox

• Eric K. Ward, Western States Center’s Executive Director and Senior Fellow with Southern Poverty Law Center and Race Forward

• Isabel Wilkerson, author of Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents.

• Tom Friedman, Pulitzer Prize winning author and columnist

• Yossi Klein Halevi, American-born Israeli writer and journalist