Hoppe Removed as Mises Institute Senior Distinguished Fellow

by Stephan Kinsella on April 1, 2026

This is April 1, but this is not an April Fool’s Day joke (I despise April Fool’s Day jokes).

In response to “Mises Institute: Quo Vadis?,” Property and Freedom Journal (March 25, 2026), Professor Hoppe has been removed as a Distinguished Senior Fellow (~2000–2026) with the Ludwig von Mises Institute, as indicated in the following email exchange. Hans was appointed Senior Fellow early in his association with the Mises Institute, which began when he moved to the US to study with Rothbard in 1985, and elevated to Distinguished Senior Fellow around 2000 or so. Hans remains the only person to have ever received this distinction from the Mises Institute; it now has no one with this designation. ¹

In response to all this, Hans asked me to post this image:

Tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito!

Here is the correspondence:

Subject: Distinguished Senior Fellow Designation
From: “Executive Directors, Mises Institute”
Date: 1. April 2026 at 16:01:33 GMT+3
To: Hans-Hermann Hoppe

Dear Dr. Hoppe,

Given the nature of your recent public statements about the Mises Institute, we are revoking your Distinguished Senior Fellow designation. We will continue to host your past articles, books, and lectures on mises.org.

Sincerely,

Judy Thommesen and Chad Parish
EXECUTIVE DIRECTORS

MISES INSTITUTE

From: Hans-Hermann Hoppe
Date: Wed, Apr 1, 2026 at 10:36 AM
To: “Executive Directors, Mises Institute”

Dear Mrs. Thommesen
Dear Mr. Parish,

If you think it helps the well-being of the Mises Institute, I will accept your decision to strip me of the title “Distinguished Senior Fellow”.
I sincerely hope that the Mises Institute will responsibly carry on the legacy of the great Ludwig von Mises and my dear teacher and mentor Murray N. Rothbard into the future, inspiring generations to come.

Sincerely
Prof. Dr. Hans-Hermann Hoppe

I note that it somewhat odd for this note to come from two non-academic executive directors, instead of the Chairman, Lew Rockwell, or Joe Salerno, its Academic Vice President. It is also odd to view the designation as some kind of status or award that can be revoked when one is displeased with the recipient; the designation was a recognition of his body of work and ideas, which has not changed; as Judy and Chad say, in fact, “We will continue to host your past articles, books, and lectures on mises.org.”

Mises Institute has now lost its most important scholar, Rothbard’s intimate associate, partner, friend, and student for the last decade of his life, the recipient of numerous awards, including the Gary G. Schlarbaum Award for lifetime defense of liberty (2006), the Murray N. Rothbard Medal of Freedom (2015), and the Caminos de la Libertad “A Life for Freedom” Award (2024), and the obvious successor and heir to Rothbard’s intellectual framework. He remains a lifetime member of the Royal Horticultural Society.

The only other former MI Senior Fellows I know of to whom something like this has happened are Walter Block, whose pro-war and anti-Rothbardian views were so egregious that association with him could not be tolerated any more by the MI; ²—and … myself. ³ I will explain this in some detail in a forthcoming article, but long-short: I was invited by Joe Salerno in 2009 to be a Senior Fellow. In the aftermath of Jeff Tucker’s and Doug French’s departure in 2011 and 2012, David Gordon, Joe Salerno, and Lew Rockwell inexplicably attacked me in a podcast in 2013 which was a long discussion, an oral history of Rothbard. When I quoted their words in a Facebook post, Peter Klein, who was temporarily acting CEO (before Jeff Deist was hired as the successor President), messaged me to ask me if I thought it was appropriate for a Senior Fellow of the Mises Institute to be criticizing other senior members of the MI; I was thinking, umm, what’s actually inappropriate is for them to be attacking me, their Senior Fellow. What they should have done was apologize, cut out the inexplicable attack on me, and re-post the podcast and focus on Rothbard. But I said you know, you’re right, remove me. Purge away, boys. I did not want to be associated with these snakes. So I feel like now I am in good company. At least I was removed by a communication with the acting CEO, a fellow scholar, not a couple of non-acdemic temporary staffers.