Tarleton State University
Government, Legal Studies, and Philosophy
Box T-0685
Stephenville, Texas 76401
Last Updated: 18 March 2024
Boleslaw Z.
Kabala, PhD
About
Dr. Boleslaw “Bolek” Z. Kabala is a political scientist appointed Assistant Professor of Political Science in the Department of Government, Legal Studies, and Philosophy at Tarleton State University (Tarleton) in Stephenville, Texas. In 2024, Tarleton recognized him with the College of Liberal & Fine Arts (COLFA) Outstanding Junior Faculty Award.
Dr. Kabala also serves proudly as a Research Associate at the Augustinian Institute at Villanova University.
Previously, he taught upper-level and introductory courses including Congress and the Presidency and American Politics at Colorado Christian University, in Lakewood, Colorado. Having made it to Texas from Yale, where he graduated with a Ph.D. in Political Science in 2016, Dr. Kabala also served as a James Madison Postdoctoral Fellow at Princeton, and, later, as a Visiting Scholar at the American Public Philosophy Institute at the University of Dallas.
In addition, he is the lead editor of the interdisciplinary volume Augustine in a Time of Crisis: Politics and Religion Contested (Palgrave, 2021). Dr. Kabala is also the lead editor of interdisciplinary Augustine: Frontiers of Pluralism, which Routledge will publish in late 2024. And he is a Co-Editor of two Special Issues of Religions and Laws, respectively: Civic Engagement, Justice, and the Law in a National and International Context and Religions and Violence: Dialogue and Dialectic.
Dr. Kabala’s current book project, Millennial Visions: Hobbes, Spinoza & The Return of Theological Politics, calls attention to a previously unexplored dimension of the Hobbes and Spinoza dialogue and shows how it informs contemporary debates on public reason and secularization.
He has been published in Perspectives on Politics, Political Research Quarterly, History of European Ideas, Israel Law Review, Political Studies Review, the Vienna Journal on International Constitutional Law, Humanities, Philosophies, Laws, Religions, Journal of Political Science Education, and Law and Politics Book Review, where his research has centered on civic engagement and overlapping consensus strategies to rebuild norms in a globally unsettled time. Moreover, he has explored new ways to understand toleration, republican rhetoric, democratic judicial politics, and feminism as informed by the novels and political texts of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
With a 2003 Harvard AB in Social Studies that combined the study of government with sociology and critical theory, Dr. Kabala has resisted narrow disciplinary boundaries, both in his own writing and co-authored pieces with undergraduates. He engaged as a student-faculty group leader at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, before moving to serve as a Deputy Press Secretary in the Office of Governor. He remains passionate about mentorship that connects learners with internships and opportunities in public life.
​Dr. Kabala is an avid runner and loves to spend time with his wife and daughter.