UToledo Institute of Constitutional Thought and Leadership

Michael R. Gonzalez is Executive Director of the Institute for Constitutional Thought and Leadership.

 

He received his PhD in political science from Baylor University, where he also served as Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow for the Baylor Honors College. His dissertation, entitled The Political Necessity of Religion, contrasted the political and theological thought of Lucretius, Saint Augustine, and Thomas Hobbes on the proper role of religion in political life. He received his BA in liberal arts from the integrated humanities program at The Thomas More College of Liberal Arts in Merrimack, NH.

 

Gonzalez was a Thomas W. Smith Postdoctoral Research Associate in Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. He also held an appointment as Lecturer in the Department of Politics at Princeton.

 

In addition to his primary research interest in religion and politics, his broad teaching and research interests include the history of political philosophy, classical Roman thought, statesmanship, and American foreign policy. His writings across the humanities have appeared in Interpretation, Public Discourse, and The Catholic Thing.

Professor Goetting joined the faculty of Adrian College in 2008 and currently serves there as a Professor of Criminal Justice and Jurisprudence and the Director of the George W. Romney Institute for Law and Public Policy. His scholarship focuses on constitutional law and civil liberties.

 

He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in General Education from Aquinas College, a small liberal arts school in Grand Rapids, MI before earning a Master of Arts in Philosophy from Western Michigan University. He served as an intern for the Cooley Innocence Project while a student at Thomas M. Cooley Law School, where he spent two terms working on several rape and murder cases.

 

Professor Goetting has taught at three law schools, served as faculty advisor to The University of Toledo Law Review, and has published dozens of writings on legal issues, many dealing with freedom of expression and the rights of those accused of crimes. His work has been cited in leading law reviews and academic journals. For his publications on the Supreme Court’s same-sex marriage cases, Professor Goetting won Adrian College’s Creative Activity, Research, and Scholarship Award (faculty-wide for best contribution to one’s field) in 2016. He won the college’s Ross Newsome Award for Outstanding Teaching in 2022. He is a contributing writer for Discourse Magazine. His collected work for the magazine, including “The Supreme Court’s Actual Innocence Problem,” his eight-article series on how the Supreme Court has failed to address the problem of wrongful convictions, can be read here.

 

Professor Goetting lives in Adrian, Michigan with his wife, Amanda; his sons, Lucas and Samuel; and his dogs Francie and Stewart. Outside the classroom, he enjoys reading novels, watching classic movies, and coaching wrestling.

Dr. Martin received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Purdue University in 2007, after which he was hired as an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay (UWGB). He earned tenure in 2013, after which he was served as Chair of Philosophy and Religious studies and, later, Chair of Humanities. He was an early instructor in UWGB’s Gateway to Phoenix Success (GPS) program, an intensive first-year learning community focusing in particular on the academic success of historically underserved students. Dr. Martin also established the Philosopher’s Café, a monthly public forum providing members of the broader Green Bay community with an opportunity to engage in open, friendly, and intellectually stimulating conversations on important and pressing social and political topics.

 

Dr. Martin joined the University of Toledo as a Visiting Associate Professor in Philosophy and Religious Studies in 2018 and was tenured and promoted to Associate Professor in 2020. He served as the Director for UT’s Roger Ray Institute for the Humanities from 2019-2020, where he created several public humanities projects serving the broader Toledo community and has designed and led many workshops on pedagogical practices and techniques for UT faculty.

 

Dr. Martin’s scholarship focuses on Early Modern metaphysics and, in particular, Benedict Spinoza’s metaphysical project. His articles, appearing in leading journals and frequently cited by other scholars, defend controversial position Spinoza’s account of necessity, essences, consciousness, causality, and Spinoza’s and Descartes’s ontological arguments for God. Dr. Martin published Spinoza’s Argument for Substance Monism: Why There is Only One Thing through Lexington Press in 2023. He is currently working on Spinoza’s formal essences and is in the early stages of Spinoza’s Ontology of Essences and Individuals.

 

Dr. Martin has taught a number of courses in Ethics, including Environmental Ethics, Business Ethics and Values Based Leadership, Medical Ethics, and Contemporary Moral Problems. He also enjoys teaching courses in Early Modern Philosophy and Metaphysics, having most recently taught an advanced course on Free Will.

 

When Dr. Martin isn’t working as an academic you can likely find him on the water, where he enjoys exploring the natural world through the seat of one of his many kayaks.

Professor Smirnov received his Ph.D. in Natural Resource Economics from West Virginia University. His scholarship focuses on regional and spatial economy, economic history, and econometric methodology. He has been an instrumental or core participant in research projects funded by the National Science Foundation, Defense Logistics Agency, Appalachian Regional Commission, including local northwest Ohio non-profit organizations and local governments.

 

Professor Smirnov supervised several graduate students (both Master’s and Ph.D.). He is teaching a range of courses in the Economics Department, including American Economic History at graduate and undergraduate level.