Honors and Awards
- Telluride Association Summer Program Scholarship
- Cornell University (full) Scholarship
- American Academy of Poets (undergraduate) Prize
- Wisconsin University "College Year in India" Scholarship
- B.A. in Philosophy, magna cum laude
- Cornell University Graduate Traveling Fellowship
- Columbia University Fellowship
- Kent Fellowship (Danforth Foundation)
- National Conference of Christians and Jews, Brotherhood Award, 5/73
- University of California, Santa Cruz, Steinhart Fellowship, Summer 1974
- NEH Summer Stipend, 1979
- NEH Fellowship (Category 'B'), 1/1/80-1/1/81
- Named to Wesleyan University’s Walter A. Crowell University Professorship of the Social Sciences, 2/92- 6/06.
- Recipient of the 2003 Wesleyan University (Division II) Binswanger Prize for Excellence in Teaching.
- Hailed by TIME Magazine as one of six “Spiritual Innovators for the New Millennium” in Dec., 2000.
- Profiled as one of Ebony Magazine’s “Power 150,” “most influential Black Americans” in May, 2007.
- Featured on the cover of Buddhadharma; The Practitioner’s Quarterly, Spring 2006, with the caption, “The New Panditas; How Jan Willis and other scholar-practitioners deepen our knowledge of Buddhism
- Invited and served as on-line panelist and writer for the Washington Post-Newsweek series’ blog, “On Faith” in Spring, 2007 (Other panelists included Elie Wiesel, Desmund Tutu, Elaine Pagels, Diana Eck, Joan Chittister, Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, John Esposito, James Forbes, Jr. and Madeleine Albright).