Karl V. Teeter

In 1968, he signed the "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War.

After a term from 1959 to 1962 as Junior Fellow at Harvard University, Teeter was appointed Assistant Professor of Linguistics. He remained at Harvard for the remainder of his career, eventually retiring in 1989 as Professor of Linguistics.

Teeter was born in Berkeley, California, to Charles Edwin Teeter, Jr., a college professor of physical chemistry, and Lura May (née Shaffner) Teeter, later in life a college professor in philosophy. Raised in Lexington, Massachusetts, he dropped out of high school and joined the United States Army, where he served as a Supply Sergeant from 1951 to 1954. In 1951, Teeter married Anita Maria Bonacorsi, the daughter of Sicilian immigrants. Sent to Japan to serve in the occupation forces, he became deeply interested in the Japanese language and on returning received a bachelor's degree in Oriental Languages from the University of California at Berkeley. There he continued his studies as a graduate student in linguistics. His dissertation, supervised by Mary Haas, was a description of the soon-to-be-extinct Wiyot language.

Karl van Duyn Teeter (March 2, 1929 – April 20, 2007) was an American linguist known especially for his work on the Algic languages.