Following graduation, Klehr was hired to teach political theory at Emory University in Atlanta. After generating several journal articles from his dissertation, Klehr moved to the study of the demographic composition of the party leadership of the Communist Party, USA, agglomerating biographical information from archival study and person-to person interviews, Klehr examined the social composition of the party's leadership caste for the first time. The result of this research was a first book, "Communist Cadre: The Social Background of the American Communist Party Elite," published in 1978 by the Hoover Institution Press.