Faculty awards and achievements

Associate Professor Heather Abraham, director of the Civil Rights and Transparency Clinic, received the 2023 Change Now! Award from Housing Opportunities Made Equal, a Western New York agency serving victims of housing discrimination.

Elizabeth Adelman, vice dean for legal information services and director of the Charles B. Sears Law Library, recently completed her term as president of the American Association of Law Libraries.

Professor Samantha Barbas, director of The Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy, appeared on CNN’s Inside Politics With John King, where she discussed the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 1964 decision in New York Times v. Sullivan.

Professor Mark Bartholomew was named a co-principal investigator on a $3.4 million grant recently approved by the National Science Foundation to support the education, recruitment and development of a cybersecurity work force.

Settling Nature: The Conservation Regime in Palestine-Israel (2023), by Irus Braverman, professor and William J. Magavern Faculty Scholar, was recognized by the Western Political Science Association as Best Book in Environmental Political Theory.

Rebecca Chapman, senior assistant law librarian, received the 2023 Minority Leadership Development Award from the American Association of Law Libraries’ Diversity and Inclusion Committee.

Professor Kim Diana Connolly, vice dean for innovation, interdisciplinarity and community impact, received the 2023 SLICE (Sustainability Leadership, Innovation and Collaborative Engagement) Faculty Award for Sustainability in Higher Education from UB’s Office of Sustainability. Connolly also served as part of the World Wetland Network delegation at the 2022 Ramsar Convention on Wetlands in Geneva, Switzerland.

Lecturer David Coombs has been appointed a fellow of the National Institute of Military Justice, the nation’s premier organization devoted to studying and improving the military justice system.

Orlando Dickson ’19, undergraduate lecturer in law, was elected chairman of the Buffalo School Board’s Ethics Commission.

Professor Meredith Kolsky Lewis, vice dean for international and graduate programs, has been appointed co-chair of the United States APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) Study Centers Consortium and recently joined the editorial board of the Journal of World Investment and Trade.

Paul Linden-Retek, who teaches in the areas of constitutional law and international human rights, has been promoted to associate professor.

An amicus curiae brief filed by Professor Tanya Monestier was quoted by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito Jr. in his concurring opinion in the Court’s decision in Mallory v. Norfolk Southern Railway Co.

Athena Mutua, professor and Floyd H. and Hilda L. Hurst Faculty Scholar, serves as vice president of ClassCrits, a network for the critical analysis of law and economic inequality.

John Henry Schlegel, UB Distinguished Professor and Floyd H. and Hilda L. Hurst Faculty Scholar (with UB President Satish Tripathi), was recognized for 50 years of service to the university and the law school.

Professor Matthew Steilen has been invited to visit the University of Cambridge Faculty of Law, where he will concurrently be a senior visitor at Emmanuel College and a visiting fellow at Wolfson College, both in Cambridge. While in residence at Cambridge, he will work on completing his book manuscript, tentatively titled Legislative Power in Early English Parliaments: A Constitutional History.

David “Bert” Westbrook, Louis A. Del Cotto Professor and co-director of the New York City Program in Finance and Law, participated in the U.S. Army War College’s 64th annual National Security Seminar. Westbrook was sponsored by a former student, Lt. Col. Stephen Trynosky ’05, practitioner-in-residence and senior military adviser at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs.