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.

Deborah A. O’Malley is an assistant professor in the Institute for Constitutional Thought and Leadership. She holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in Political Science from Baylor University and a B.A. in Political Science and Philosophy from Ashland University, where she participated in the John M. Ashbrook Scholars Program.

 

After completing her Ph.D., Dr. O’Malley was a postdoctoral fellow in the James Madison Program at Princeton University. She was then a Visiting Assistant Professor at Assumption University for four years and served as Associate Director of the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Center for Scholarship and Statesmanship. During her time at Assumption, she received the Student Government Association's Faculty Award and the Jack Miller Center's Excellence in Civic Education Award. Most recently, she was Associate Director of the Center for Citizenship and Constitutional Government at the University of Notre Dame.

 

Dr. O'Malley's research interests include First Amendment jurisprudence, American political thought, and Alexis de Tocqueville. She is currently a Research Fellow with the Center for Religion, Culture and Democracy.

Kevin Vallier is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toledo’s Institute for American Constitutional Thought and Leadership. Vallier’s interests lie primarily in political philosophy, ethics, philosophy of religion, and philosophy, politics, and economics (PPE). He is the author of four monographs, five edited volumes, and over fifty peer-reviewed book chapters and journal articles. His books include Liberal Politics and Public Faith: Beyond Separation (Routledge 2014), Must Politics Be War? Restoring Our Trust in the Open Society (Oxford UP 2019), and Trust in a Polarized Age (Oxford UP 2020). His new book is All the Kingdoms of the World: On Radical Religious Alternatives to Liberalism (Oxford UP 2023). For more information, see kevinvallier.com or follow him @kvallier on Twitter.

Gregory M. Gilchrist is a Professor at The University of Toledo College of Law. He teaches and writes in the areas of criminal law, criminal procedure, and white collar crime. He is a graduate of Stanford University (AB, 1994, Honors and Distinction) and Columbia University (J.D., 1998), where he was a Stone Scholar and Kent Scholar. At Columbia, Gilchrist served as an Articles Editor for the Columbia Law Review. Following graduation, Gilchrist clerked for Judge Robert H. Henry of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.

 

Gilchrist is a co-author of two books: “White Collar Crime- Law and Practice” by Israel, Podgor, Borman, Henning, Baer and Gilchrist, (5th Ed., West Academic, 2022) and “White Collar Crime in a Nutshell” by Podgor, Baer and Gilchrist (6th Ed. West Academic, 2022). He has also authored numerous articles on criminal law, criminal procedure, white collar crime, and corporate criminal liability. These articles have appeared in journals such as Iowa Law Review, University of Colorado Law Review, Hastings Law Journal, Georgia State Law Review, Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review, Brooklyn Law Review, and University of Pennsylvania Law Review Online.

 

Prior to joining the faculty, Gilchrist was a criminal defense lawyer both in private practice and in the Office of the Federal Public Defender for the District of Maryland. He has tried over ten cases to verdict and helped many more clients avoid indictment altogether. Gilchrist has defended individuals, corporations, and public officials in criminal and civil proceedings, and has represented individuals in congressional investigations. He also has conducted internal investigations and advised corporations on criminal compliance matters. Today, Gilchrist maintains an active criminal defense practice, representing individuals in federal criminal cases as a member of the CJA Panel for the Northern District of Ohio.

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 award again in 2024 for “The Supreme Court’s Actual Innocence Problem,” a presentation he gave at the Annual Meeting of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences March 22, 2024 on the Supreme Court's failure to address the problem of wrongful convictions. The presentation was based on a series of eight articles he wrote for Discourse Magazine, which can be read here.

 

He won the Adrian College’s Ross Newsome Award for Outstanding Teaching in 2022 and served as an Assistant Coach on Adrian College's MIAA championship wrestling team in 2023.

 

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, classic movies, and sports.

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.