Dr. Thomas Hibbs

Thomas Hibbs is the J. Newton Rayzor Sr. Professor of Philosophy and Dean Emeritus at Baylor University, where he was the inaugural dean of the Honors College (2003-2019).  At Baylor, he was the founding Director of Baylor in Washington, D.C. (2015-2019).  He currently directs a donor funded Baylor summer program in D.C. on religion and social life. Hibbs has a Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame and served as a tutor at Thomas Aquinas College, Full Professor and Department Chair of Philosophy at Boston College, and President of the University of Dallas. (For more on Hibbs’ administrative work, see below.)

His lectures have been protested by nihilists at Boston University and communists in Palermo, Sicily. 

Hibbs works in the areas of medieval philosophy, especially Thomas Aquinas, contemporary virtue ethics, and aesthetics. He has published eight books.  His first book Dialectic and Narrative in Aquinas: An Interpretation of the Summa Contra Gentiles was published by the University of Notre Dame Press (1995) in the Revisions Series, edited by Stanley Hauerwas and Alasdair MacIntyre. His most recent book, Theology of Creation: Ecology, Art, and Laudato Si’ is also published by ND Press (2023).    

He has taught widely in interdisciplinary core programs at Boston College and Baylor.  Hibbs’ BC class on philosophy and popular culture, which regularly drew more than 100 students, was featured in a Boston Globe article.  With his wife, Dr. Stacey Hibbs, he has co-taught a Baylor Capstone course on friendship in philosophy, literature and film. 

Hibbs received the American Maritain Association Scholarly Excellence Award (2010), was a Faculty Mentor for the Lilly Graduate Fellows Program (2013-2016), and served as President of the American Catholic Philosophical Association (2017).

Hibbs has led intellectual and spiritual retreats for faculty at both the university and high school levels and for college students in numerous venues. 

He has been a regular contributor to National Review Online, where he reviewed films for fifteen years, and to the Dallas Morning News, as an op-ed columnist.  He has published more than 100 articles on film, theater, art, and higher education in a variety of venues including First Things, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The New Atlantis, The Wall Street Journal, and National Review.  He also has two books on film and philosophy and one on art, co-authored with Makoto Fujimura. 

Called upon regularly to comment on film and popular culture, Hibbs has made more than 100 appearances on radio, including nationally syndicated NPR shows “The Connection,” “On the Media,” and “All Things Considered,” as well as local NPR stations in Boston, MA, Ann Arbor, MI, Dallas, TX, and Rochester, NY.

Hibbs’ writing in popular venues can be found here. 

Hibbs has been involved in several collaborations with Zaytuna College, in Berkeley, CA, the first accredited Muslim college.  He has delivered the “Canon Lecture” on Aristotle’s Ethics and is currently working on a series of lecture on the Ethics for the Zaytuna Online Courses Series.

He has published articles in the journal Renovatio, including most recently a piece on Bob Dylan and Maritain’s aesthetics. He has co-led discussions for the Zaytuna Online Book Club, a global community of readers that regularly draws more than 300 on Zoom, for discussions of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, Alasdair MacIntyre’s Short History of Ethics, and Raghib al-Isfahani’s The Art of Cultivating Noble Character.  He has also hosted Zaytuna faculty at Baylor, including Rhamis Kent on Islamic approaches to ecology. 

Recent Publications: 

Book: Theology of Creation: Ecology, Art, and Laudato Si’ (University of Notre Dame Press, 2023).

Articles: “Courage as Attack or Endurance: Debates in the Black Intellectual Tradition Over How to Combat Racism,” with Michael T. Barry, Jr., The Thomist 89 (2025), pp. 331-357.

“Pascalian Themes in Newman’s Grammar: Whose Rationality? Which Deity?” in a Critical Guide to Newman’s Grammar, edited by Frederick Aquino and Matthew Levering in the Critical Guides Series at Emmaus Academic Press (2025).   

“Jacques Maritain, Art, and the Varieties of Transcendence,” in Art Seeking Understanding, edited by Bob Roberts and David Jeffrey (Baylor University Press, 2024).    

“Learning to See, Feel, and Say: The Art of Georges Rouault as Propaedeutic to Theology,” in A Prophet in the Darkness: Exploring Theology in the Art of Georges Rouault, edited by Wesley Vander Lugt (IVP, 2024). 

“Newman, Moral De-Formation and the Pursuit of Truth,” in Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association. 95 (2024), pp. 1-18.

“Aquinas and Black Natural Law,” Nova et Vetera, 21 (2023), pp. 943-970. 

Review of Fran O’Rourke, Joyce, Aristotle, and Aquinas in The Thomist 87 (2023), pp. 506-509. 

Administrative Bio: Thomas Hibbs

Since 2023, Hibbs directs a summer program (Religion and Social Life) for Baylor students in Washington, DC. For students, the program includes an internship, site visits to government agencies and non-profits, and seminars on topics as diverse as human trafficking, poverty alleviation, religious liberty, leadership, and truth and reconciliation. Hibbs oversees the entire program and leads regular spiritual reflection sessions with the students, in addition to meeting individually with students to assist in discernment of calling.   

From 2019 to 2021, Thomas S. Hibbs was President of the University of Dallas (UD). In his first year, he completely restructured both advancement and marketing/communications. His philanthropic efforts led to an immediate and significant increase in the number of new endowed scholarships established by the University. In his first year alone, Hibbs secured 16 new endowments; the historical annual average for new endowments over the previous six and a half decades at UD was 1.2 per year. 

Hibbs also secured new grants, including a large grant from the Constantin Foundation in Dallas to support programming for first-generation students.  He and his wife established an endowed scholarship for first generation students. 

Hibbs expanded the marketing and communications efforts at UD. He established a Presidential Conversation series, instituted collaborations with numerous national organizations and wrote regular op-ed columns for the Dallas Morning News. 

He introduced more than a dozen new initiatives addressing issues of diversity, all organized around a Catholic vision for appreciating difference within unity. Hibbs increased diversity on the Board of Trustees and worked closely with a student group to establish Student Leaders for Racial Solidarity. 

Hibbs led UD through its response to the pandemic.  In the Fall of 2020, UD re-opened both its Irving and Rome Campuses for in-person, residential learning. UD was among a very small percentage of universities that managed to hold 80% of its classes in person.  An even smaller number continued their study abroad programs.  That year, faculty received raises and no benefits were cut.    

Also, in the middle of the pandemic, Hibbs led UD through an inclusive process that resulted in the first Strategic Plan in a decade. At the same time, he was tasked by the Board of Trustees with designing a restructuring plan that would cut $3.1 million out of an annual operating budget of around $60 million. That plan, rooted in the work of a faculty task force, was approved by the board.  He also achieved significant debt restructuring for the university. 

From 2003-2019, Hibbs was Dean of the Honors College and Distinguished Professor of 

Ethic and Culture at Baylor University.  The Honors College includes four programs with more than 1,300 students and 35 full time faculty members.  It also features a residential facility with 320 students, on-site faculty offices, a faculty-in-residence, and a chaplain-in-residence.  The Honors Residential College was launched in the second year of Hibbs’ tenure. 

At Baylor, under Hibbs’ leadership, The Honors College endowment grew from zero to more than $15 million. Funds support tuition scholarships, distinguished lecture series, study abroad and mission trips, and faculty mentoring of undergraduate research.  During Hibbs’ tenure, the Honors College’s largest program, the Honors Program, witnessed a threefold increase in retention.  Hibbs designed, implemented and was the featured speaker at an annual Honors College recruitment event (Invitation to Excellence), whose yield was 50-65%. 

At Baylor, Hibbs was also Director of Baylor in Washington, in which capacity he coordinated student internships, a religious liberty initiative with Georgetown University, and monthly faculty events.  Topics included: hunger and poverty; the role of churches in addressing homelessness; Christian social innovation; immigration; new techniques in the field of film and digital media; manufacturing, economics, and the middle class; faith-based higher education; cancer research; and African American Gospel music. Hibbs established the first semester-long academic program in D.C. for BU students. 

Before his time as dean at Baylor, Hibbs held a position at Boston College (1990-2003) where he was Full Professor and Chair of the Department of Philosophy.  He was Undergraduate Director at a time when BC had more than 300 philosophy majors.