Gibbard was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1990 and was elected a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences in 2009, one of only two living philosophers to be so honored (the other being Brian Skyrms), and the Econometric Society, and has also received Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities. He served as President of the Central Division of the American Philosophical Association from 2001 to 2002. He gave the Tanner Lectures at the University of California, Berkeley in 2006.