Our People

Flagg Taylor is Executive Director and Professor in the Center for Civics, Culture, and Society. He has been a visiting fellow at the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University and serves as Chair of the Academic Council of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. His teaching ranges widely in the history of political philosophy and in the American political tradition. Taylor’s writing and research has been focused in three areas: totalitarianism and dissent; liberalism; and American constitutionalism and executive power. 

Kenlea Barnes, Research Associate

Kenlea Barnes is a Research Associate in the Center for Civics, Culture & Society. Kenlea is originally from West Texas and received her B.A. from Texas State University, her M.A. from the University of North Texas, and her PhD from Louisiana State University. Kenlea teaches courses such as Dimensions of American Civic Thought, The American Political Tradition, and Free and Civil Speech, where we explore the enduring problems that face politics and question our role in creating and/or solving those problems. She uses teaching methods that encourage class discussion, while deeply engaging with the assigned texts for the day. She simply begins by asking her students to take the material seriously and that if they do so, they will begin to take their own thoughts seriously. 

Kenlea’s research explores Thomas Jefferson’s view of American public education and its role in securing individual liberty for citizens and the political community. Her work has been published in a variety of journals, including Presidential Studies Quarterly, Journal of Political Marketing, and Journalism Studies.

Shasta Kaul, Research Associate

Shasta Kaul is a Research Associate at the Center for Civics, Culture and Society at Miami University, and a doctoral candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame. Through three case studies, her dissertation, What is Real in Political Realism? An Exploration of Authority in the work of Arendt, Machiavelli, and Kautilya, argues that realists from very different times and places understand that epistemic issues strongly influence how authority can be wielded sustainably in any given regime. She is also interested in understanding what it means to be a citizen, and how the idea of citizenship has changed over time.

Shasta was born in India and raised in Singapore. She received a B.A. in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from the University of Oxford in 2018, and an M.A. in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago in 2019.

Jonathan Pike, Visiting Assistant Professor

Jonathan Pike is a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Center for Civics, Culture, and Society at Miami University (Ohio). He teaches courses on the American political tradition and American political thought. His primary interest is in the transatlantic history of ideas and the relationship between theological and political thought in the long eighteenth century (c. 1660-1830). He has published on the Newtonian theology of Samuel Clarke in relation to human liberty and moral agency, as well as on Jonathan Mayhew’s sermons. His research focuses on the theological roots of the American Revolution. His doctoral dissertation was on the Trinitarian debates of the early to mid-eighteenth century and the impact of that theological debate on the transatlantic Anglo-American discourse on authority before the American revolutionary era—the institutional separation of Church and State and the rise of State protections for (individual) Conscience. Within the History of Ideas he has an interdisciplinary background; he took his BA from Brigham Young University in History and subsequently received an MA in History from Oxford Brookes University, an MSt in Theology from the University of Oxford, and a PhD in American Studies from Universität Heidelberg. 

Oleg Bondarenko, Administrative Assistant

Oleg Bondarenko is an Administrative Assistant at the Center for Civics, Culture, and Society at Miami University. Oleg is originally from Russia and has lived in the United States since 2003. He received an A.A. in History from Sinclair Community College in 2019 and a B.A. in History and Political Science from Miami University in 2025. Oleg's primary interests include Russian and European history, as well as US foreign and trade policy.