Prior to pursuing his doctorate, he taught high school and community college and ran summer youth enrichment programs in New York.

In 1980, Buckley returned to the United States, joining the University of Hartford as director of the African American Studies program.

Between 1997 and 2016, he wrote a historical fiction trilogy, "Accommodation and Resistance: Three Who Chose Rebellion," in which he unpacked issues of race, culture, nationality, and politics in the British Army of the nineteenth century through fictionalized portrayals of three British soldiers, each a real-life historical figure: a Black African, an Indian Hindu, and an Irish Catholic.

[7] Buckley also penned mystery-thriller novels featuring fictional McGill University history professor and ladies' man Relph Coggins.

[8] Buckley received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, American Council of Learned Societies, John Carter Brown Library at Brown University, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Sir William Osler Medical Library at McGill, and the University of Connecticut.