Associate Professor
Ph.D. State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1982
Fields: American politics, public policy, media and politics, political economy, political behavior, political culture, government-business policies
Director, Undergraduate Program
Thom Yantek is an associate professor of political science. He has been at Kent State since 1982, the year he received his Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Professor Yantek teaches a variety of courses in the areas of American politics, political economy, public policy, and research methods. In addition to regularly offering the introductory course in American politics, Dr. Yantek teaches Politics and the Mass Media, Politics in the Corporate Culture, Political Economy, and Political Methods (statistics) on a recurring basis.
After concentrating his early research efforts on the various ways economic conditions affect political behavior, Dr. Yantek more recently has turned his attention to the interactions among the political, social, and economic sectors of (American) society. He is the co-editor (with Joseph Harper of KSU's journalism department) of Media, Profit, and Politics (2003), which examines the various ways politics and the mass media influence one another. He is currently in the middle of a large-scale project exploring the evolution of the American political culture, particularly as that culture has been shaped by the needs of the corporate sector. The tentative title of the projected book is Capturing the Flag: The Corporate Takeover of the American Political Culture.
e-mail: tyantek@kent.edu