John Kline Legacy

I have been a university professor for over 35 years, a profession that interested me as early as the ninth grade. My father had hoped I would follow him into the ministry (my given names – John Mark – are from the Gospels), but my older brother entered seminary first, leaving me freer to pursue othe rpaths. I never expected my path would lead from the plains of South Dakota, where I spent my formative years, into the world of international affairs and eventually to a small apparel factory in the Dominican Republic.

I first set foot outside the country on a late-college trip to Canada. Following a tour of military duty in Germany, I began graduate studies at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington D.C. With general intention of becoming a diplomat, I abandoned German to begin introductory classes in French, the classic language of diplomacy. My plans were altered by encounters in the lunchroom where near-daily discussions took place over political developments in Latin America. The school was next door to the Embassy of Chile, which lacked a lunchroom, so embassy personnel often ate as SAIS. I knew little about Latin America and did not speak Spanish, but I decided I wanted to learn.

Her name was Rosita del Carmen Arancibia Beltran. After two weeks struggling with French, I changed classes and began to struggle with Spanish. It was obvious I needed a native Spanish speaker to practice with and I was fortunate that she liked full dark beards. As graduation neared, we merged our earlier individual plans into a July wedding at my parent’s home, then in Nebraska. Five months later we were married again in a different backyard in Santiago, Chile. That was my third foreign excursion, this time amidst the curfew and nightly gunfire that still echoed from Childe’s military coup.

Business codes of conduct entered my vocabulary during a graduate school internship that turned into full-time employment at the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM). As staff to their International Economic Affairs Committee, I became engaged in debates over codes proposed in the United Nations and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The mid-1970s was a turbulent time with many difficult issues between multinational corporations and developing countries. The NAM job required working with top corporate executives to develop and then advocate a common policy for U.S. manufacturers. The experience and exposure were great, but I gre troubled about losing my own views and judgement in the process.

I simultaneously pursued a part-time Ph.D. program at George Washington University to further my eventual goal of teaching. An unexpected opportunity arose when Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service advertised for a teaching administrator to become deputy director of a new program in International Business Diplomacy. They wanted someone with both academic credentials and business contacts who could develop an executive training program in business-government relations. I was offered the position at a lower starting salary but accepted after a weekend spent tightening the household budget.

My academic career at Georgetown commenced with the fall 1979 semester and continues up to the present. From my perspective, the job was ideal, with advantages one might only hope doe after spending years in the academy. While teaching the program’s introductory course, I created two new courses, including one that examined many of the complex issues I had confronted at NAM. Gaining a tenure-track appointment after completing my Ph.D., I then faced the dreaded, “publish or perish” mandate. My dissertation provided the basis for a first book, while a second emerged from a survey analysis of nearly 120 company codes of conduct. The resulting 1985 publication, International Codes and Multinational Business, evaluates the responsiveness of company codes to intergovernmental standards.

The move to campus freed me from the strictures of business advocacy, allowing me to accept independent consultant contracts. Many interesting projects were with he United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in Geneva. These activities complemented and extended my academic research, becoming s progressively more important focus for my work than traditional academic journals. Particularly relevant were chapters in the UN’s World Investment Reports of 1994 and 1999 that addressed, for the first time in that publication, the social responsibility of transnational corporations.

Beginning in 1999 student protests against overseas sweatshops occurred on campuses around the country, including a sit-in demonstration in the office of Georgetown University’s president. The university adopted a labor code of conduct for its licenses and established an unusual licensing oversight committee (LOC) for code implementation, with students, faculty, and administrators represented in the committee’s membership. Although I noted these events and we discussed them in my international business ethics class, y vision remained focused on UN meetings where labor issues were but one of many topics covered by international codes.

The fall of 1999 also was the first time I taught a class for freshmen. This course, titled ” Money, Politics and Ethics in a GLobal Political Economy,” reshaped my goals as much or more than it may have influenced the incoming students. Particularly important was the role of Emil Totonchi, a student in the fall 2002 class who became an activist with Georgetown’s student solidarity committee.

Approaching me one day during his junior year, Emil acknowledged my UN work but questioned why I did not pay more attention to campus issues closer to home. A the time a student-led coalition was pressing the administration to adopt a living-wage policy for university employees. Frustrated with the lack of progress over several years, some 20 students began a hunger strike in March 2005 to draw attention to the issue. After nine days, an agreement was forged for progressive pay increases to reach a living wage.

I was struck by the contrast between this local achievement and my inability to identify concrete results for people’s lives from numerous intergovernmental meetings and publications in which I had participated. At Emil’s urging, I volunteered to become a faculty member on Georgetown’s LOC for the following academic year. So begins the tale of my now involvement with living-wage issues and eventually research on the Alta Gracia apparel factory in the Dominican Republic.