Hibben was born in Peoria, Illinois, just before the start of the American Civil War, on the day when Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a blockade of the Southern ports.

His father came from Hillsboro, Ohio, to the pastorate of the Presbyterian church in Peoria, and on the outbreak of the American Civil War volunteered for service as a chaplain in the Union Army.

This system revitalized traditional methods of instruction such as lectures and recitations by including small discussion groups and stimulating independent reading and study.

Hibben did not support Wilson's proposal to eliminate the upper-class eating clubs and reforming dormitories by housing undergraduate students in quadrangles presided over by members of the faculty.

Hibben kept aloof from these acrimonious debates, but allied himself with the group opposed to the quad system, not because of sympathy with the clubs, but because he did not want to alienate a large number of alumni.

The university endowment increased fivefold; the size of the faculty doubled; a four-course plan of study in the upper classes was initiated; the work of the scientific departments was extended; and the schools of architecture, engineering, and public affairs were founded.

The great expansion in the field of science at Princeton during this period is attributable largely to Hibben's generous recognition of the leadership of Dean Henry Burchard Fine.

He defended the ideas that underlie the traditional "liberal education," pleaded for the humanities, and, while he recognized the role of "pure" science, his own interest was to conserve and revitalize the inheritance of the past.

In "The Vocation of the Scholar," in the volume A Defense of Prejudice, he opposes William James's "creed of change," with this declaration of philosophical fundamentalism: "There are certain ideas which in the history of the race experience have become established for all time, for all places, and for all persons and things" (pp. 146–47).

In the little volume The Higher Patriotism (1915—translated into Japanese, Chinese, and Spanish) may be discerned the deeper reasons for his ardent advocacy of the Allies in the First World War.

President Hibben, his wife, and daughter were in Europe when World War I began and returned to the United States aboard the Campania in September 1914.

In December 1916 Hibben, Theodore Roosevelt and other philanthropists including Scottish-born industrialist John C. Moffat, William A. Chanler, Joseph Choate, Clarence Mackay, George von Lengerke Meyer, and Nicholas Murray Butler purchased the Château de Chavaniac, birthplace of the Marquis de Lafayette in Auvergne to serve as a headquarters for the French Heroes Lafayette Memorial Fund,[7] which was managed by Chanler's ex-wife Beatrice Ashley Chanler.

[8][9] When peace came he joined the League of Nations non-partisan organization, worked for disarmament and conciliation, and was one of the first signers of a petition advocating the canceling of all war debts.

His friendship with Col. Charles Lindbergh, with whom he was in daily contact after the tragic kidnaping at Hopewell, New Jersey, intensified his interest in the suppression of crime.