Events
What is Beauty? Aquinas and Contemporary Culture
A lecture by Prof. Thomas Hibbs (Baylor University)
When:
April 23, 2026 | 7:30 PM PDT
Chapter:
University of Oregon
Location:
111 Lillis Hall
This lecture is free and open to the public. No pre-registration is required.
About the speaker:
Thomas Hibbs is currently J. Newton Rayzor Sr. Professor of Philosophy at Baylor where he is also Dean Emeritus, having served for 16 years as the inaugural Dean of the Honors College. At Baylor he was also the inaugural director of Baylor in Washington, D.C. where he currently runs a donor funded summer program on Religion and Social Life.
Hibbs has published eight books, the most recent of which is Theology of Creation: Ecology, Art, and Laudato Si’ (ND Press, 2023). He has written three books on Aquinas and two on film and philosophy. His most recent scholarly essay is “Catherine of Siena: A Neglected Resource for the Recovery of the Integrity of Aquinas’ Ethics” (American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 2026).
He is co-director of the newly established Lilly Network Leadership Institute designed to mentor administrators at faith-based institutions of higher learning.
He is involved in a series of collaborations with Zaytuna College, the only accredited Muslim liberal arts college in the United States, including co-leading Zaytuna’s monthly Zoom book club, which averages more than 300 participants and features classical and modern texts from Western and Islamic traditions.
He has published more than 100 articles reviews on film, art, and higher education in a variety of venues including First Things, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Wall Street Journal, and National Review. He speaks regularly for the Thomistic Institute and writes often for the Dallas Morning News.
Hibbs’ lectures have been protested by nihilists at Boston University and by communists in Palermo, Sicily.