Biography

Jon is an internationally respected, Emmy-winning documentary producer and writer on public policy issues related to religion, science and society, sustainability and corporate ethics. He is an adjunct fellow at theAmerican Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research in Washington, D.C., and is contributing editor to NGOWatch.com.  He also writes the column “The Last Word: The Contrarian,” for Ethical Corporation.

Abraham’s Children: Race, Identity and the DNA of the Chosen People (Grand Central Publishing, October 2007), merges genealogy, genetics, and religion to vividly bring to life a new understanding of Western identity and the shared biblical ancestry of Jews and Christians. It addresses a range of fascinating issues, including the DNA of Jewish IQ, the story of the Lost Tribes, the emergence of Christianity, the use of DNA by the descendants of forced converts out of Judaism who discover their Jewish ancestry and identity, and the age-old question of “Who is a Jew?” He also focuses on the effort to identify cures for diseases that disproportionately impact specific populations and the social and political tempest that a renewed focus on race research is stirring.

Jon has 20 years of experience as a network television news producer, winning more than twenty awards including Emmys for specials on the reform movements in China and the Soviet Union.  He has produced news magazine programs at ABC News and CBS News, an entertainment special for NBC, and was Tom Brokaw's long-time producer at NBC News, where he was also the executive in charge of documentaries. In 1989, Tom and Jon collaborated to write and produce Black Athletes: Fact and Fiction, named Best International Sports Film of 1989), which led to his best-selling book, Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We are Afraid to Talk About It (Public Affairs,2000), which is being reissued in 2007. AEI recently published two books written and edited by Jon: Pension Fund Politics: The Dangers of Socially Responsible Investing (AEI Press, November 2005) on the growing influence of social investing in pension funds and Let Them Eat Precaution: How Politics Is Undermining the Genetic Revolution in Agriculture (AEI Press, January 2006), which examines the debate over genetic modification (GMOs), food, and farming.

Jon's work has been featured or profiled in hundreds of articles and on many TV and radio programs, including ABC’s 20/20 and World News Tonight, FOX’s Bill O’Reilly and Hannity & Colmes, CNN’s Anderson Cooper and Lou Dobbs, MSNBC’s Hardball, HBO, NPR, BBC, C-Span, Court TV, National Review, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer, Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, GQ, Business Week, Fortune, National Post (Canada), Toronto Globe and Mail, The Australian, The Australian Business Review, Guardian (UK), The Telegraph, The Mail on Sunday, and The Sunday Times (UK).
Jon has participated in and organized dozens of public forums on policy issues at the AEI, the Brookings Institution, and the Hudson Institute, including: Corporate Image Advertising and the Future of Free Enterprise (Jun 2007), Is Nuclear Power a Solution to Global Warming (Oct 2006), Corporate Social Responsibility Serious Business? (Mar 2006), Panic Attack: The New Precautionary Culture, and the Politics of Fear (Feb 2006), Science Wars: Should Schools Teach Intelligent Design? (Oct 2005), The Business of Stem Cells, Race, Medicine, and Public Policy (March 2005).

Jon has served as a lecturer at various universities, including Columbia, Michigan, Arizona State, NYU, and most recently Miami (Ohio), where he was scholar-in-residence. Jon graduated from Trinity College (Hartford) in 1974 with a degree in philosophy and earned a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship in Journalism at the University of Michigan in 1980-1981.

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