Earon S. Davis

Earon Davis is a trans-disciplinary researcher and writer, retired lawyer, award winning public and environmental health advocate, and former adjunct lecturer and professor. Born to a working-class Jewish family in Chicago, a grandson of Immigrants from Eastern Europe. Now retired, he has served as an attorney, hearing officer, consultant, journalist, nonprofit counsel, integrative health practitioner, and adjunct college professor, having worked part-time while raising children. Earon currently lives in Bloomington, Indiana, where he has been active in the local NAACP chapter, interfaith organizations, Rotary International, and other peace-building and social justice activities. He has been doing research and writing on his family history, broadly defined, for 25 years.

Earon was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He attended Chicago Public Schools and supplemental "Hebrew School" at Temple B'nai Shalom in Albany Park. Earon attended the University of Illinois at Chicago, majoring in Sociology, earning his B.A. degree with honors, when it was a commuter school. He worked part-time to support his undergraduate education. Earon attended Washington University School of Law in St. Louis, Missouri, earning his Juris Doctor degree in 1975, and went to work for the Illinois Pollution Control Board as Confidential Assistant to the Chairman. Earon was admitted to the bars of Missouri, Illinois and Washington, D.C., from which he is now retired.

He then moved to Los Angeles and attended UCLA School of Public Health, earning a Masters of Public Health related to health policy. Earon then moved to Washington, D.C. where he worked as a legal specialist and project manager for an environmental consulting firm. Next, he worked for the Migrant Legal Action Program, heading up an effort to create a toxic chemical training manual for farmworker advocates. Earon then returned to Chicago, where he helped raise three sons, worked as a consultant and advocate for people with severe chemical sensitivities and as a speaker and writer, publishing an acclaimed newsletter, The Ecological Illness Law Report. During this time, Earon served on EPA working groups, National Academy of Medicine panel and a workshop for the Office of Technology Assessment.

Next, Earon studied integrative bodywork and became an Integrative Medicine practitioner for the NorthShore University Health System. In the same time frame, he began teaching online college courses through what would become Purdue University Global, as an Adjunct Professor. Earon also taught at an Adjunct Lecturer in Public Health at the Indiana University School of Public Health, while also serving in the environmental sustainability community of practice. During this time, he also wrote numerous articles on sustainability and systems thinking.

Earon grew up in a “Traditional Judaism” movement congregation in Chicago, attended “Hebrew school” after the secular school day and/or Sundays, until a year after Bar Mitzvah. He has belonged to a Conservative Congregation and Renewal groups and has studied several of the world’s religions, wisdom traditions and philosophy. He identifies as Jewish and with humanistic Judaism and has studied Jewish ethics, mysticism, and Kol-Chai environmental values.

To view more writing by Earon S. Davis, see https://purdue.academia.edu/EaronDavis