Richard Hughes Seager, associate professor of religious studies at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, said he thought that some of the controversy over Hsi Lai had involved "a yellow-peril dimension." When the story about the fund-raising scandal first broke, he said, he began following editorial cartoons on the subject. "It did evoke the Charlie Chan image, and some of the old stereotypes related to Asia," said Dr. Seager, who is the author of Buddhism in America (Columbia University Press).
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