Walter E. Block is Harold E. Wirth Endowed Chair and Professor of Economics, College of Business, Loyola University New Orleans, and senior fellow at the Mises Institute. He earned his PhD in economics at Columbia University in 1972. He has taught at Rutgers, SUNY Stony Brook, Baruch CUNY, Holy Cross, and the University of Central Arkansas. He is the author of more than 700 refereed articles in professional journals, three dozen books, and thousands of op-eds (including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and numerous others). He lectures widely on college campuses, delivers seminars around the world and appears regularly on television and radio shows.

Prof. Block is the Schlarbaum Laureate, Mises Institute, 2011; and has won the Loyola University Research Award (2005, 2008) the Mises Institute’s Rothbard Medal of Freedom, 2005; and the Dux Academicus award, Loyola University, 2007. He has lectured, debated and/or made presentations at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Chicago, Berkeley, Stanford, British Columbia, Toronto, Simon Fraser, and scores of other universities.

Prof. Block counts among his friends Ron Paul and Murray Rothbard. He was converted to libertarianism by Ayn Rand. Block is old enough to have played chess with Friedrich Hayek and once met Ludwig von Mises, and shook his hand. Block has never washed that hand since. So, if you shake his hand (it’s pretty dirty, but what the heck) you channel Mises.