Daniel Kiel

Daniel Kiel is the FedEx Professor of Law at the University of Memphis, where he teaches Property, Constitutional Law, and Education & Civil Rights. His scholarly work centers of education law, as well as constitutional questions of citizenship and justice.

He is the director of The Memphis 13, a documentary film sharing the stories of the first graders who first desegregated schools in Memphis, and the author of The Transition: Interpreting Justice from Thurgood Marshall to Clarence Thomas (Stanford Univ. Press), which traces the lives and work of the two justices at the center of the most consequential Supreme Court transition of the past 75 years. In addition, Professor Kiel received a Fulbright Fellowship in 2015 and researched post-apartheid education policy at the University of the Free State in South Africa.

Professor Kiel's broader scholarly work has been published in a variety of journals and periodicals and has been shared at museums, universities, film festivals, and conferences across the country. At the University of Memphis, he has been awarded both the university-wide Distinguished Teaching Award and the Martin Luther King, Jr., Human Rights Award, and has served in multiple capacities, including as an associate director, at the Benjamin Hooks Institute for Social Change.

Education
J.D., Harvard Law School, 2004; B.A., University of Texas at Austin, 2001