Who is Dr. Jeremy Fernando, Tembusu College fellow, sacked for alleged sexual misconduct?

Dr. Jeremy Fernando, a fellow at Tembusu College, was fired from his teaching position as reports of sexual misconduct claims surfaced from some of the students he taught. Tembusu College is one of four residential colleges under the National University of Singapore.

NUS has been under fire since last year as incident after incident of sexual harassment involving male students peeping, stalking, and recording women against their will surfaced. But this time, the case involves a professor.

Who is Dr. Jeremy Fernando?

According to a report by Channel News Asia, Dr. Jeremy Fernando was fired after the National University of Singapore conducted investigations into two claims put forth by some students that allege Dr. Fernando to have made sexual advances against them without their consent.

A spokesperson for the NUS said that the investigation centered on claims that Dr. Fernando had “behaved inappropriately as a teaching staff,” towards two students who reported the matter to the school. The same representative also said that the sacked lecturer was “found to have fallen short of the standards of professionalism that the university expects of a teaching staff.”

Dr. Jeremy Fernando received his PhD from The European Graduate School where he was the Jean Baudrillard Fellow. His professional information has been removed from the school’s page.

His writing work has been featured abroad in Seoul, Vienna, and Hong Kong.

He had previously written about teacher-student relations in a self-published article about the 2014 Singapore sex-for-grades scandal.

What did Dr. Jeremy Fernando do to the two students who complained?

A report from The Straits Times said that two students had complained about Dr. Fernando.

The first complainant said that the unwanted sexual overtures from Fernando began in October last year and lasted well into Circuit Breaker. He allegedly groped and kissed her, and even performed oral sex on her while she was drunk.

Her account said, “Throughout these months, he made increasingly informal contact that grew in intensity and frequency.

“He also sent many gifts to my house even after I had requested him to stop. He pressured me into various sexual acts and discouraged me from telling my friends.” she added.

Fernando then allegedly engaged the second victim through Zoom when the start of online classes began. They began messaging privately, and they eventually met up at a restaurant then went back to her apartment with another male student.

While the male student was in the toilet, he allegedly made an advance on her that involved kissing and touching. When she refused his advance, he asked her not to reveal what happened between them or else he would lose his job.

The two women did not want to give their ages, and declined to be identified. The university also did not release other details, nor did they say that Dr. Fernando’s dismissal had anything to do with what the two women alleged.

Cancelled BDSM event

A BDSM event had been previously linked with Dr. Jeremy Fernando, but was cancelled because the participants’ data and other important details were doxxed. The Tembusu College student group called tFreedom had arranged for the event called Rope Bondage Zoom Discussion.

Header image from YouTube

Errata: the article previously mentioned Yale-NUS. This is erroneous and has been corrected. Dr. Jeremy Fernando was only related to NUS.