I Chose Liberty - Ludwig von Mises Institute

158 I Chose Liberty: Autobiographies of Contemporary Libertarians
law and Jim’s emphasis on what he calls the institutions of economic freedom, my colleagues
at Florida State have more of an institutional emphasis than an Austrian emphasis, but the
libertarian slant is still there.
I continue to be associated with the Mises Institute, which has pulled my academic
work in more of an Austrian direction. Faculty research is evaluated largely based on publications,
and until recently there have been few outlets for explicitly Austrian economic
research. The Mises Institute established the Review of Austrian Economics in 1986, the
Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics in 1998, and holds an annual Austrian scholars
conference. These outlets for Austrian-oriented academic research mean that I can devote
more of my research time to specifically Austrian topics and have more of a chance to get
them published, and have those vehicles to disseminate the results of my research the academic
community. I’m excited to see a growing community of libertarian and Austrian
faculty in our universities, and I try to provide my students with an introduction to this
set of ideas that I never knew about when I was in college.
Randall G. Holcombe is DeVoe Moore Professor of Economics at Florida State University, and an
adjunct scholar of the Ludwig von Mises Institute.
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JOHN HOSPERS
LIBERTARIAN THOUGHTS REBORN
I was born in Pella, a town of about 5,000 in central Iowa. It began as a Dutch colony
in 1847, settled by a group of emigrants from Holland who were rebelling against certain
Dutch laws and regulations of the State Church of Holland. My great-grandfather, John
Hospers, was leader of the Second Emigration to Iowa in 1849. He and his wife and eight
children made the move to Iowa on the suggestion of a missionary who said that this portion
of Iowa had the richest soil in the world.
My great-grandfather, whose diary of the journey I still possess, was en route from
Holland to Iowa for about two months. He lost two children on the way when scarlet fever
broke out on the ship. He landed in New York and traveled by boat up the Hudson to
Albany, where he buried yet another child who had contracted scarlet fever. Then via the
Erie Canal to Buffalo, and a Great Lakes steamboat to Chicago (described as “a flourishing