The Highlight, our home for ambitious stories that explain our world. Laurie Zoloth, a religious scholar and bioethicist, has spent years helping scientists and policymakers around the world examine complex ethical dilemmas. What responsibilities do humans have in the face of climate change? How can we address health care disparities that continue to devastate Black and brown communities? How do we convince people to set aside their personal preferences and do the right thing? And above all, how do we make our world more fair? For Zoloth, a professor at the University of Chicago’s Divinity School, the coronavirus pandemic offered yet more proof that it’s not enough to appeal to Americans’ feelings of patriotism or even to other secular ideas about working for the greater good of the greatest number of people. Tackling Covid-19 required every American to make personal sacrifices to protect society as a whole. But there was still loud resistance from individuals who thought that the ask was too great — who did not want to be part of that mutual project or were opposed to submitting to the state’s regulations.