Robert W. Cherny (born 1943) is a U.S. historian, Professor emeritus of History at San Francisco State University, and a co-founder of the Labor Archives and Research Center, also at San Francisco State University.

He is the author or co-author of eight books: Populism, Progressivism, and the Transformation of Nebraska Politics, 1885-1915 (1981), San Francisco: Presidio, Port, and Pacific Metropolis (with William Issel, 1981), A Righteous Cause: The Life of William Jennings Bryan (1985), San Francisco, 1865-1932: Politics, Power, and Urban Development (1986), American Politics in the Gilded Age, 1868-1900 (1997), Victor Arnautoff and the Politics of Art (2017), Harry Bridges: Labor Radical, Labor Legend (2023), and San Francisco Reds: Communists in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1919-1958 (forthcoming 2024). He is co-editor of American Labor and the Cold War: Unions, Politics, and Postwar Political Culture (with William Issel and Keiran Taylor, 2004) and California Women and Politics: From the Gold Rush to the Great Depression (with Mary Ann Irwin and Ann Marie Wilson, 2011). He also co-authored two textbooks, an online book, and numerous book chapters and articles.

Cherny grew up and attended primary and secondary school in Beatrice, Nebraska. In 1965, he graduated with a B.A. (with distinction) from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He went on to graduate school at Columbia University, earning an M.A. in 1967 and Ph.D. in 1972, both in history.

In 1971, Cherny took a position as Instructor in the Department of History at San Francisco State University. The following year, he became Assistant Professor, moving up to Associate in 1977 before becoming a Full Professor in 1981. He spent a five year term as department chair (1987-1992), in addition to serving as Acting Dean of the School of Behavioral and Social Sciences in 1984-1985 and Interim Dean of Undergraduate Studies in 2005-2008. Cherny retired from teaching in 2012.

In 1985, Harry Bridges, the retired president of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), and Nariko (Nikki) Sawada Bridges, a writer, activist, and Harry’s wife, asked Cherny if he would write Harry Bridges’ biography. Cherny agreed, conducting oral history interviews with Harry Bridges and over 70 of Bridges’ family members, friends, trade unionists and other left-wing activists and visiting dozens of archives. In 1996, he served as Distinguished Fulbright Lecturer at the Lomonosov Moscow State University, allowing him to conduct research in the newly accessible records of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He ultimately published Harry Bridges: Labor Radical, Labor Legend in 2023.

Cherny's research for Bridges' biography spawned two additional books. The first is a biography of the Russian-American painter Victor Arnautoff, published as Victor Arnautoff and the Politics of Art in 2017. The second is a study of members of the Communist Party of the United States in California, titled San Francisco Reds: Communists in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1919-1958.