Hannes H. Gissurarson is Professor Emeritus of Political Philosophy at the University of Iceland. His doctoral dissertation at Oxford University was about the political theory of F. A. von Hayek, and his most recent book in English is “Twenty-Four Conservative-Liberal Thinkers” freely available online. In the book, he traces conservative liberalism all the way back to the philosopher St. Thomas Aquinas and historian Snorri Sturluson, while in the chapters on Hayek, Karl R. Popper, Milton Friedman, and James M. Buchanan, he describes his encounters and the interesting conversations he had with them. Hannes founded the Libertarian Alliance in Iceland in 1979, which was active for ten years. In 1984 he ran a pirate radio station to protest the governmental monopoly on broadcasting. Although he was convicted of breaking the law, the monopoly was abolished. In 1983 he was one of the founders of the Hayek Society at Oxford university. The society was devoted to the discussion and development of classical liberal and conservative ideas. Returning to Iceland in 1985, he was a friend and adviser to David Oddsson, Prime Minister in 1991–2004. During Oddsson’s tenure a comprehensive programme of liberalization, stabilization, privatization, and tax cuts was implemented, which strengthened the economy and made Iceland one of the countries with the quickest recovery from the financial crisis of 2007–2009. Hannes was a member of the board of the Mont Pelerin Society in 1998–2004 and of the board of the Central Bank of Iceland in 2001–2009. He has been a Visiting Professor, Scholar at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, LUISS in Rome, UCLA, and at several other universities. On the occasion of his retirement as Professor of Political Philosophy, the University of Iceland is holding a one-day international conference in Reykjavik on May 12, 2023.
Hannes H. Gissurarson
Professor Emeritus of Political Philosophy at the University of Iceland