Warren Smith never had aspirations of fame.
For years, he worked as a teacher in a Massachussets secondary school, specialising in media and film. That was until 2024, when he was suddenly fired from his position.
His crime?
Encouraging a student to think critically about why they hated J.K. Rowling.
When it broke, the story spread like wildfire across social media, inviting praise and scorn into Warren’s life at a scale he’d never experienced. Unwilling to let the moment define him, he started a YouTube channel. On Warren Smith -Secret Scholar Society, he dissects clips of popular debates between the most popular pundits of our time, explaining why their arguments work (or don’t) or where their reasoning goes wrong (and doesn’t).
Why did we invite him on?
Stories like Warren’s are as fascinating as they are troubling. Private citizens being fired for their views is one thing, but that’s even not what happened here. Warren was let go for asking clarifying questions - for encouraging a student, in an institute of learning, to think for themselves. That’s a whole new breed of chilling effect.
What’s that like? How does an experience like Warren’s shape you?
We wanted to find out, and why not hear it from the man himself?
What did we learn?
Before we can go into that, you need to know precisely what happened. If you didn’t follow Warren’s story at the time, you might find this hard to believe.
”The video was of me talking to a student. They asked me: ‘How have your views on Harry Potter changed given J.K. Rowling’s bigoted opinions?’ I asked them about the presupposition in there, and they released they didn’t have the data to back that up, and they changed their mind.”
It sounds inocuous enough. Political conversation is hardly atypical in high school today and, if anything, this sounded like an example of de-radicalisation occuring in the classroom. It’s unclear why this was even newsworthy. Warren doesn’t argue.
”I’m surprised anyone watched it really.”
But people did watch it. In their millions.
The clip went viral. Thousands distributed it and thousands more shared their enthusiasm for Warren’s conduct. To many, it was a breath of fresh air, a reminder that there were still educators out there striving to expand the horizons of their students. Imagination, not indoctrination. J.K. Rowling herself even reached out.
Still, it was only the beginning.
”Then Piers Morgan invited me on. I knew if I went to the school and asked them about it, it’d have to go through the chain of command and it’d take too long, so I just did it. Before that, I wasn’t really in trouble - the other teachers didn’t like it, but I wasn’t getting fired. After the Piers Morgan interview, I’m meeting with the principal and the lawyers.”
That’s rarely a good sign. What happened?
”They congratulated me! The principal told me he would have done the same thing, and the lawyers wished me luck. They also told me: ‘We hope you don’t make any mistakes’.”
”We hope you don’t make any mistakes.” What does that mean? Were they trying to intimidate Warren?
”That was definitely the tone… There were some things that happened that people wouldn’t believe.”
From here, it’s a baffling story, as Warren shares the loss of friendships, the legal battles he endured with his previous employer, and how one confrontation’s aftermath led to him sleeping on the bathroom floor after an evening with anxious throwing up.
Warren recovered victory from the jaws of cancellation, but not everyone has been so lucky. For every story like his, there are countless we will never hear. Stories of anonymous and average people, snuffed out of polite society for raising the wrong opinion at the wrong time. Warren has seen the damage this has, particularly among young people.
”There’s a fear among the students about having these conversations. At Emerson College, I see it. Students will march into classes to prevent certain topics from even being discussed. One time, white students were told to ‘surrender’ their white privilege for the duration of a talk. I don’t understand it…”
To our viewers, this is nothing new; left-wing ideologues dominating higher education has been a subject of conversation since long before we started our show. What might alarm you is this - as much as wokeism is retreating in other aspects of life, it’s very much alive in education. And getting worse.
