UCI awarded Cohen its highest honor, the UCI Medal, in 1993, and conferred on him a Clair Trevor Professorship and Bren Fellowship in 2001. In 1999 he received the Career Achievement Award in Academic Theatre from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, and in subsequent years he has been awarded the Honoris Causa Professor degree at Babes-Bolyai University in Romania and the Polish Medal of Honor in Wroclaw. He lives in Laguna Beach, California with his wife, Lorna Cohen, and has two children, Michael and Whitney.