CULT OF CURIOSIY

CULT OF CURIOSIY

STAFF ARCHIVE APRIL 10, 2009

INSIDER 0

UW-Milwaukee chancellor Carlos Santiago’s courting of wealthy philanthropists took a bizarre turn last April when he flew to Tokyo to award an honorary degree to controversial religious leader Daisaku Ikeda. Even more curious, Ikeda’s group paid the expenses for the five-day trip to Japan by Santiago, UW-System Regent Tom Loftus and two other university representatives. Ikeda, […] 

UW-Milwaukee chancellor Carlos Santiago’scourting of wealthy philanthropists took a bizarre turn last April when he flew to Tokyo to award an honorary degree to controversial religious leader Daisaku Ikeda. Even more curious, Ikeda’s group paid the expenses for the five-day trip to Japan by Santiago, UW-System Regent Tom Loftus and two other university representatives. 

Ikeda, 79, is the son of a poor seaweed seller who rose to become leader of Soka Gakkai, a lay Buddhist organization with some 12 million followers and estimated assets of $125 billion. Ikeda styles himself as a humanist and peace broker, and devotees consider him a modern-day Buddha. But Rick Ross, who runs a New Jersey-based institute that studies cults, considers the group a cult with a totalitarian structure. “It’s personality driven,” Ross says, “and Ikeda is the personality.” 

Soka Gakkai has 8 million members in Japan and about 500,000 in the United States. The group has founded elementary and high schools in Japan. It also opened a university, which is where Santiago honored Ikeda. Author and prominent Buddhist scholar Laurence O. McKinney says Ikeda “has no reputation as a theological leader,” but has used contributions to buy approval and prestigious connections. McKinney notes that when Harvard refused to provide Ikeda a speaking venue, he rented a basement room at Harvard, and the Soka Gakkai-funded Boston Research Center for the 21st Century billed his talk as a historic “lecture at Harvard.” 

Santiago declined several interview requests. Randy Ryder, secretary of the university, said a faculty committee made the recommendation for a degree and Santiago approved it. “We Googled. We didn’t see anything [negative on Ikeda],” Ryder says. Ryder also says Ikeda was not physically up to traveling to Milwaukee, so his group paid the travel expenses for UWM officials. 

We look forward to “a fruitful relationship of cooperation and exchange,” a delighted Ikeda wrote in a letter to Santiago. Broadcasting that new fruitfulness was Soka Gakkai’s newspaper, whose 6 million readers saw a photo splashed across its front page, a grinning Santiago dishing out the honorary degree.