<div class="css-s99gbd StoryBodyCompanionColumn" data-testid="companionColumn-0"><div class="css-53u6y8"><p class="css-ac37hb evys1bk0">Harry Keyishian, one of five University of Buffalo faculty members who were dismissed in the early 1960s for refusing to sign a loyalty oath, a vestige of anti-Communist witch hunts, and whose legal challenge led to a Supreme Court decision that enshrined academic freedom with constitutional protection, died on April 4 in Morristown, N.J. He was 92.</p><p class="css-ac37hb evys1bk0">His daughter Amy Keyishian confirmed the death in a hospital.</p><p class="css-ac37hb evys1bk0">Professor Keyishian (pronounced kay-EE-shee-un) was in an early stage of his career when Buffalo hired him as an English instructor in 1961. After the school joined the State University of New York system a year later, staff members were required, under the state’s Feinberg Law, to sign the loyalty oath, swearing that they were not Communists or any other type of political subversive.</p><p class="css-ac37hb evys1bk0">When Professor Keyishian’s contract was not renewed after he refused to sign the oath, he felt connected to Queens College faculty members he knew who had been fired in the 1950s for not answering questions about their Communist affiliations.</p><p class="css-ac37hb evys1bk0">“What I still carried as a kind of burden into the ’60s,” Professor Keyishian <a class="css-yywogo" href="https://billmoyers.com/content/for-the-people/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" title="">later told</a> the journalist Bill Moyers, “was a sense of frustration and impotence, to watch these very decent, these intellectually talented and dedicated teachers, vanishing from the system and being driven out and not being able to do anything about it.”</p></div><aside aria-label="companion column" class="css-ew4tgv"></aside></div><div data-testid="Dropzone-1"></div><div class="css-s99gbd StoryBodyCompanionColumn" data-testid="companionColumn-1"><div class="css-53u6y8"><p class="css-ac37hb evys1bk0">In 1964, Professor Keyishian — along with four other faculty members, George Hochfield, Newton Garver, Ralph Maud and George Starbuck — sued the New York State Board of Regents, seeking to declare the 1949 Feinberg Law unconstitutional.</p><p class="css-ac37hb evys1bk0">After a federal judge dismissed the complaint, the U.S. Court of Appeals revived it. But the three-judge panel that heard the case, known as Keyishian v. Board of Regents, ruled for the state.</p><div class="css-kbghgg"><div class="css-121kum4"><div class="css-171d1bw"></div><div class="css-asuuk5"><noscript><div class="css-7axq9l" data-testid="optimistic-truncator-noscript"><svg aria-hidden="true" class="css-1b5b8u1" data-tpl="i" height="24" viewbox="0 0 24 24" width="24"><path clip-rule="evenodd" d="M2.5 12a9.5 9.5 0 1 1 19 0 9.5 9.5 0 0 1-19 0Zm8.5 1.75v-7.5h2v7.5h-2Zm0 2v2h2v-2h-2Z" fill="currentColor" fill-rule="evenodd"></path></svg><div class="css-6yo1no" data-testid="optimistic-truncator-noscript-message"><p class="css-3kpklk" data-tpl="t">We are having trouble retrieving the article content.</p><p class="css-3kpklk" data-tpl="t">Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.</p></div></div></noscript><div class="css-1dv1kvn" id="optimistic-truncator-a11y" tabindex="-1"><hr/><p>Thank you for your patience while we verify access. 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