Video: School Fires Teacher Who Made Viral Video Cross-Examining ‘Transphobia’ Narrative
Warren Smith, the teacher behind a viral video skewering LGBT activists’ narrative that critics of gender ideology are “transphobic,” has been fired, he announced this week in a follow-up video detailing his ordeal.
Smith originally went viral in February for a video of his response to a student asking if he still liked Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling’s work “despite her bigoted opinions.” Smith engaged the student in a Socratic dialogue dissecting the premise that Rowling’s vocal opposition to the gender-fluidity movement constitutes bigotry, inviting a reconsideration of the pervasive leftist assumption.
I debate a teenage CEO on J. K. Rowling & subjective evidence.
— Warren Smith (@WTSmith17) April 23, 2024
From class #1 pic.twitter.com/NWhTuCzcv3
On May 13, three months later, Smith announced he was fired from his unidentified school last week.
7 days ago I was fired from my school after 4 years of teaching.
— Warren Smith (@WTSmith17) May 13, 2024
I recorded this the following day in order to share my perspective - honestly & in good faith - in order to move forward and put this experience behind me. I have no desire to cause complications or bring unwanted… pic.twitter.com/Bf61VC2dD1
“It happened so quick, it happened in like five minutes,” he said. “There was really no conversation, so they clearly knew what they wanted to do (…) I have devoted four years of my life to this school and yesterday it was like being a character in a video game and just being deleted and it was like you were never there (…) It was remarkable. By people that love to pretend they’re your teammates.”
“So when you say, ‘We appreciate you not divulging,’ I don’t know if that means you’re threatening my severance package, I really hope not,” he added to the unidentified individual behind the decision, noting that while he accepts the decision, “sometimes how you do it though is important and I think this could have been done without just taking my computer and losing a book that I’ve been writing for two years, multiple things I’ve been writing for two years, all the data from two years, my digital life.”
Smith told SCNR News that he did not “want to open up myself to them in any way” by identifying the school “after the way they went about this and seeing the lengths they will go to. Perhaps one day, but for now I just want to move on and look forward to never thinking about them again.”
He did, however, elaborate that it stemmed from missing a “one sentence email was sent out to the school stating, ‘If you would like to upload anything to social media check with your supervising principal.’”
X/Twitter owner Elon Musk, whose sharing of the original video helped it go viral, lamented Smith’s firing, saying that “(c)ritical thinking inhibits indoctrination and schools have become indoctrination centers.”
Critical thinking inhibits indoctrination and schools have become indoctrination centers
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 13, 2024
While the incident has drawn widespread condemnation of the school on social media, Not the Bee concluded its report on a positive note, noting “we have a feeling that Warren Smith has a brighter future ahead of him.”
The indoctrination of children with left-wing ideology on sexuality and other left-wing agenda items has long been a major concern in American public schools, from libraries to athletic and restroom policy to drag events to classroom materials to even socially “transitioning” troubled children without parental input. The influential American Library Association, currently helmed by a self-described “Marxist lesbian,” opposes denying children access to age-inappropriate materials.
