Michael Gonzalez (Ph.D. 2022) appointed as inaugural Executive Director for the Institute of American Constitutional Thought & Leadership (IACTL) at University of Toledo
In February, 2024, Michael Gonzalez (Ph.D. 2022) became the inaugural Executive Director for the Institute of American Constitutional Thought & Leadership (IACTL) at the University of Toledo. The Institute is the first of five programs created by the Ohio legislature to provide a dedicated space for civic thought. As the first of these programs, the Institute holds a leading position, setting a valuable precedent for Ohio civic education reform. In addition to serving as Executive Director, he also holds an appointment as an Assistant Professor, tenure track.
As Executive Director, Dr. Gonzalez plays a leading role in curricular design, institutional development, and faculty hiring. He assisted in conducting a nationwide search for the Institute’s first tenure track faculty. Among the successful candidates who joined the Institute is Dr. Deborah O’Malley, who completed her Ph.D. in Baylor’s Department of Political Science in 2017. The title of her dissertation is “Religious Institutions and Associational Freedom in U.S. Supreme Court Jurisprudence.”
Professor Lee Strang, the Institute’s inaugural Director, provided the following statement regarding Professors Gonzalez and O’Malley: "The first faculty hires for the Institute had to be extraordinary, and Debbie and Michael are precisely that. Debbie is a stellar teacher with great scholarly promise. Michael is also a remarkable teacher and scholar; he also exemplifies exceptional talent in administration, thanks especially to mentors at the James Madison Program and Baylor. We were fortunate to make these the first hires for the Institute and indeed the larger Ohio civics education initiative. I am proud to be working with them across institutions!" Professor Strang accepted a position in August at The Ohio State University in order to lead the Salmon P. Chase Center for Civics, Culture, and Society. Following this transition, Dr. Gonzalez received an appointment from the University of Toledo’s President to serve as the Institute’s Interim Director.
Professor Gonzalez completed his Ph.D. at Baylor’s Department of Political Science in 2022. He completed his dissertation on the theological and political thought of Lucretius, St. Augustine, and Thomas Hobbes under the direction of Professor Timothy Burns. His MA thesis was on “The Common Law of Nations: The Ius Gentium in the Political Thought of Francisco Suarez.” He wrote his thesis under the direction of Professor Emeritus and former Department Chair David Clinton, with whom he also worked as a teaching apprentice.
In addition to his primary research interest in religion and politics, Professor Gonzalez’s broad teaching and research interests include the history of political philosophy, classical Roman thought, statesmanship, and American foreign policy. In addition to an essay on Suarez, his writings across the humanities have appeared in Interpretation, Public Discourse, and The Catholic Thing.
Dr. Gonzalez spent the 2022-23 academic year as the Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow for Baylor’s Honors College, where he taught in both the Great Texts and Baylor Interdisciplinary Core programs. After his time at Baylor, he went on to become a Postdoctoral Fellow in the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions (JMP) at Princeton University, where he also served as a Lecturer in the Department of Politics.
As a James Madison Fellow, Dr. Gonzalez continued his research into early modern receptions of classical and early Christian theological-political thought. He also worked closely with Bradford Wilson and Shilo Brooks, the James Madison Program’s outgoing and current Executive Directors, to understand how the JMP’s success could be modeled in other institutions.
Dr. Gonzalez provided the following statement of gratitude to his graduate professors at Baylor: “It is a testament to the mentorship of David Clinton, Timothy Burns, and Mary and David Nichols that Professor O’Malley and I are working together to build the first center for civic thought in Ohio. Mary Nichols founded Baylor’s Department of Political Science to be a place where students could continue their liberal education, not end it. I am proud to be imitating her excellent example, bringing her community-building spirit to Toledo and to the Ohio civic education reform project.”
Professor O’Malley said the following regarding her new position and her formative experience at Baylor: “I am grateful and honored for the opportunity to join the Institute of American Constitutional Thought & Leadership and to advance civic education in my home state of Ohio. Baylor's political science graduate program left me uniquely prepared for this position in that it offered an interdisciplinary approach to studying politics, drawing on literature, history, and philosophy. Our studies at Baylor ranged from Aristotle to Shakespeare to the American Founders, and I look forward to reading many of the same great texts with my students at the University of Toledo. In studying these texts with students and colleagues, I hope to help build an intellectual community just as enriching as the one I experienced at Baylor.”
Prior to Joining the Institute, Professor O’Malley served as Associate Director for the Center for Citizenship & Constitutional Government at the University of Notre Dame. She also taught at Assumption University and was a Forbes Postdoctoral Research Associate at the James Madison Program, Princeton University, for the 2017-18 academic year. She has won awards for faculty excellence and excellence in civic education, in addition to receiving the outstanding dissertation award at Baylor’s Department of Political Science.