How does a credentialed US college employ an illegal alien sex offender as a professor with unsupervised authority over young students? That question was on the top of many minds as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a stunning news release on Nov. 25 stating that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents had arrested Ferris State University (FSU) Assistant Professor of Marketing Sumith Gunasekera, “a criminal illegal alien sex offender from Sri Lanka.”
Gunasekera has a highly disturbing history of sex charges that apparently slipped past FSU administrators. In 1998, he was arrested in Ontario for “invitation to sexual touching and sexual interference.” Gunasekera has admitted that the charges were related to a minor. In 2003, he was nabbed in Las Vegas for “open and gross lewdness.”
“It's sickening that a sex offender was working as a professor on an American college campus and was given access to vulnerable students to potentially victimize them,” DHS Public Affairs Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin observed. What can possibly drive a university to neglect what should be its first duty to its students, protecting their personal safety on campus?
Blind adherence to a leftist cultural and social agenda once again seems to be the culprit. Ferris State is all in on the pursuit of “racial justice” to such a degree that it hosts and is the process of expanding a museum dedicated to a fixation on race and racism.
‘Anti-Racism Training Sessions’ at College
FSU’s Jim Crow Museum “will serve as a base for quality scholarship addressing the complexities of race, race relations, and racism,” the university states on its website devoted to the center. “The museum will encourage collaborative work with high schools, universities, museums, government agencies, and human rights organizations, including, but not limited to, producing original research, planning and hosting tours and conferences, and conducting anti-racism training sessions.”
This Michigan college seems to be actively molding social justice warriors.
“The Jim Crow Museum at Ferris State University is envisioned as an international leader in the anti-racism movement,” the school states. “I have a goal to create a room that when people come into that room, it changes the way they talk about race,” Dr. David Pilgrim, vice president for diversity and inclusion at FSU and “curator” of this modern museum on race, is quoted as saying.
As DEI and the Black Lives Matter movement continue to recede in the popular culture, the Jim Crow Museum appears to be thriving. A fund-raising effort to support construction of a new building has reached its $22 million campaign goal.
‘Equity Mindedness’ Task Forces on Campus
The Ferris Equity Initiative (FEI) is another social justice campaign conducted by the college. FEI works in conjunction with EAB Global, an educational consulting firm, whose stated goal is to “drive transformative change at more than 2,100+ schools by providing insight-driven solutions in six major areas.” “Equity” is one of them.
At Ferris State, the technological approach sounds full-on Orwellian.
“The intent of these campus-wide efforts is to develop Equity Mindedness,” the university declares. “We will develop practitioners throughout our campus prepared to recognize and act upon patterns of inequity, especially in student outcomes. This work will require understanding of inequities as a dysfunction of the structures, policies and practices we control.”
So Ferris State seems to be declaring its intent to dispatch squads of trained thought police “throughout our campus” to detect and immediately “act upon” interactions deemed to be violations of equity.
Must Hire Minorities
It’s also crucial to note that Ferris State is determined to go out of its way to hire non-white employees. This undoubtedly explains the vetting of Gunasekera by the college.
“Ferris State is a predominantly white institution (PWI) located in a rural, economically poor area in Michigan,” the university’s official “2023-24 Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging Report” stated. “This can make relocation less attractive for minority candidates looking for inclusive and welcoming surroundings. Specific job categories at Ferris provide inadequate compensation, making it challenging to attract minorities to relocate to Big Rapids.”
That poses a severe challenge to the school’s equity mission.
“Cultural barriers to diversifying the workforce exist on campus,” the report asserted. “Traditional recruitment methods and hiring practices favor white applications, impacting the selection of minority candidates at PWIs. Additional and continual work needs to focus on bias in recruitment and hiring.”
Never fear, however. A solution is in the works.
“[The Division of] Academic Affairs is in the process of developing an Academic Strategic Plan. That plan will include significant goals and strategies for incorporating diversity and inclusion in teaching, learning, and research,” the report read.
And this is how a dangerous sex offender from Sri Lanka illegally residing in this country is able to burrow his way into a university system and secure a professorial position.
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