Soka University of America
[10] SUA encompasses both a four-year liberal arts college and a graduate school offering a master's program in Educational Leadership and Societal Change.
Soka University administrators disputed all allegations of discrimination and noted that the majority of faculty and staff are not Buddhist, said there was no evidence of preferential treatment, and said that the institution has never taught nor will it teach Buddhist—or any other—religious practices.
[16] In 2011, Michelle Woo wrote an article for OC Weekly, a local publication in Orange County, California, in which she mentioned possible proselytizing of non-Buddhist staff and students.
Opponents sought to protect the Chumash ancestral site, the natural habitats and ecology, and the expansive open space viewshed within the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, and to prevent a development of unprecedented urban density adjacent to Malibu Creek State Park.
[23][24] According to the Los Angeles Times newspaper, the reputation of the Soka Gakkai - sometimes denounced as a cult -, its political power in Japan, and several scandals, also raised criticism against the project.
According to an article by the Los Angeles Times, the SUA "enlisted well-connected lobbyists and advocates in a bid to influence Congress and the Interior Department In 1992, the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority (MRCA), a joint-powers authority associated with the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, resorted to its powers of eminent domain to condemn the core parcel comprising the institution and thereby halted SUA's plans for expansion.
[20] The legal debate continued for the remainder of the decade, and the SUA enlisted well-connected lobbyists and advocates in a bid to influence Congress and the Interior Department", says the Los Angeles Times newspaper.
[25] Soka University was eventually prevented from developing any expansion plans at the Calabasas property and began looking for alternative sites to build a larger campus.
The graduate school held its first commencement in December 1995, and in the same year SUA acquired a 103-acre site in Aliso Viejo for a private non-profit four-year liberal arts college, and built a $265-million campus.
[27] SUA sold the Calabasas property in April 2005[28] to a coalition of buyers led by the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority (MRCA).
[20][29] The former campus is now public parkland, known as King Gillette Ranch Park, and houses the visitor center for the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.
[30] In 1995, the institution bought 103 acres (0.42 km2) of rough-graded property for $25 million in Aliso Viejo, California, located in southern Orange County.
The architecture was designed in a style resembling an Italian hillside village in Tuscany, with red-tiled roofs, stonework, and earth colors.
