Honors and Awards2018-02-22T21:53:47+00:00

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).