Stillman studied at the University of Pennsylvania, receiving the B.A. (magna cum laude) in 1967 and Ph.D. in Oriental Studies in 1970, Shelomo Dov Goitein being his thesis advisor. He was a post-doctoral fellow at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. He has received numerous academic honors, among them the Phi Beta Kappa, the SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching and the SUNY-Binghamton award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. He delivered the Momigliano Lectures for the University of Chicago's Committee on Social Thought and the Sherman Lectures for the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. He was Lady Davis Fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1994-1995 and visiting fellow at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel-Aviv University. He received the Ohio State University Melton Center's Distinguished Humanist award in 2000 and was a visiting scholar at the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales in Paris in 2001-2002.Staff and Students , Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, University of Oklahoma Stillman also appears in the 2005 film, The Hebrew Project.
