Harvey Kline was born and raised in Salisbury, North Carolina. He attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on a Morehead Scholarship, majoring in political science and Spanish and graduating with honors in 1966. He received his Ph.D. in Government at the University of Texas in Austin in 1970 (with distinction) and then taught political science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (1971-1985) and the University of Alabama (1985-2010),He first went to Colombia as an undergraduate exchange student at the Universidad de Antioquia in 1964, next returning to Bogota from 1968-1970 as a professor at the Universidad de los Andes while he wrote his doctoral dissertation. During that time he had scholarships from the Fulbright-Hayes Commission and from Latin American Teaching Fellowships. He later returned to the Universidad de los Andes twice with Fulbright Scholarships, in 1980-1981 on a research grant and in 2004 on a teaching one. On four other occasions he carried out research at the same university.Kline retired from teaching in 2010 but continues research and publishingHe is married to the former Dorothy Rendleman. They have three grown children and eight grandchildren.