The Jontz lec­ture series is an annual event hosted by the ADA Edu­ca­tion Fund hon­or­ing the life and val­ues of James “Jim” Prather Jontz.  Jontz served in the Indi­ana House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives (1974–84), Indi­ana Sen­ate (1984–86), and U.S. House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives (1986–92). He was Pres­i­dent of ADA from 1998–2002 and Pres­i­dent Emer­i­tus until his death in April 2007.

In 2003-04, he coor­di­nated ADA’s “Regime Change 2004” and “Stop Out­sourc­ing Our Future” cam­paigns to raise the vis­i­bil­ity of eco­nomic glob­al­iza­tion issues in the 2004 Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. Whether in or out of office, his pas­sion for pro­gres­sive poli­cies never flagged.

Jontz’s mem­ory lives on through our annual lec­tures, which reflect and cel­e­brate his phi­los­o­phy of mobi­liz­ing the pub­lic for eco­nomic jus­tice through edu­ca­tion. The lec­ture series is made pos­si­ble through the Jontz Fund, a gen­er­ous memo­r­ial cre­ated by his close friends to honor his ser­vice to ADA and the ADA Edu­ca­tion Fund.

Our 2010 Jontz Lec­ture occurred on Thurs­day, June 10, 2010. With Pres­i­dent Obama sign­ing the his­toric health care reform bill on March 23, 2010, ADA Edu­ca­tion Fund focused the lec­ture on “Health Care: Here’s How We Got Here and Here’s Where We Go Next.” Mod­er­a­tor Rep. Jim McDer­mott (D-WA) led speak­ers Ms. Karen Davis, Pres­i­dent, The Com­mon­wealth Fund; Mr. Richard Kirsch, Con­sul­tant, Health Care for Amer­ica Now; and Mr. Gerry Shea, Exec­u­tive Assis­tant to the Pres­i­dent for Exter­nal Affairs, AFL-CIO. The insight­ful and lively panel dis­cussed the recent Health Care leg­is­la­tion and the path taken to reach this his­toric milestone.