Donald G. Nieman is an authority on modern U.S. law and politics, and professor of history and provost emeritus at Binghamton University – State University of New York.
He is the author and editor of several books, including, most recently, The Path to Paralysis: How American Politics Became Nasty, Dysfunctional, and a Threat to the Republic (2024). Other books include Promises to Keep: African Americans and the Constitutional Order, 1776-Present (2nd ed., 2000), an influential history of civil rights in the United States; To Set the Law in Motion: The Freedmen’s Bureau and the Legal Rights of Blacks, 1865-1868 (1979); The Constitution, Law, and American Life: Critical Aspects of the 19th Century Experience (1991); Freedom, Racism, & Reconstruction: The Collected Writings of LaWanda Cox (1997); and (with Christopher Waldrep) Local Matters: Race, Crime, and Justice in the Nineteenth Century South (2000).
His op-eds on contemporary American politics have appeared in the Washington Post, Newsweek, Huffington Post, U.S. News & World Report, and Salon, to name a few. His research has been supported by fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies and New York University School of Law.
He lives in Vestal, New York with his wife, historian Leigh Ann Wheeler, their son Brady Wheeler-Nieman, and their three canine companions Daly, Sasha, and Zuri.