New depth in our faculty roster

Professor Manoj Mate, a scholar of election law and constitutional law, comes to UB Law from DePaul University College of Law in Chicago. He has taught or held visiting positions or fellowships at law schools including Berkeley; Whittier College in California; the University of California, Irvine; Harvard; and the University of Windsor in Ontario.

Mate did his undergraduate work at the University of California, Berkeley, earned the JD from Harvard Law School and returned to Berkeley to earn a doctoral degree in political science. He has published widely on constitutional law, comparative constitutional law and election law, and has become a go-to source for popular media as the nation wrestles with how the courts increasingly intersect with the electoral system.

His turn to academia, from private practice, came after the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2000 decision in Bush v. Gore, which effectively decided that year’s razor-close presidential election.  “Only now are we realizing the full implications of courts intervening in elections and politics,” Mate says. “It’s critical that we think about whether it’s always a good thing for courts to be involved—and when they get involved, are they bolstering our democracy or are they undermining it?”

Professor Seval Yildirim serves as the University at Buffalo’s vice provost for inclusive excellence and chief diversity officer, in addition to her law school appointment.

As vice provost, she draws on her extensive administrative experience in higher education, including in diversity, equity and inclusion; faculty and student recruitment and retention; promoting inclusive pedagogy and classrooms; community outreach; and fundraising. She previously held senior leadership roles at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and at California State University, San Bernardino.

A scholar of law and religion, Yildrim earned both a JD and LLM degree at New York University School of Law, and also has a master’s degree in international affairs from George Washington University. She studies and writes about issues related to human dignity, secularism in comparative contexts, Muslim identity and the law, populism and free speech. Her current research explores patterns and formations of populism in comparative contexts, as well as the diminishing scope of free speech protections in the United States.

In addition, Yildirim has served as pro bono counsel and legal consultant on individual rights cases across the United States, working with grass-roots organizations including the American Civil Liberties Union.

George P. Brown Jr. ’17 returns to his law school alma mater as an instructor in the foundational Legal Analysis, Writing and Research program.

He has worked in private practice and as a corporate counsel but welcomed the opportunity to get back into the classroom. “I’ve always been a lifelong learner,” Brown says, “and I had always been interested in academia. This is a place where scholarship is encouraged, and I love being in that environment.”

Brown studied psychology as a UB undergraduate, and that laid the groundwork for his interest in narrative arguments. Storytelling, he says, can be an effective tool in all types of legal writing.

“While many may understand the practical applications of storytelling in briefs and memorandums before a court,” he says, “it is just as important to implement storytelling skills in transactional drafting. Thinking of the business relationship in this manner allows you to imagine the different risks and outcomes this contract could create and allows you to protect your client before the business relationship begins.”