Inside the Strange Meltdown of Higher Ed, with Warren Smith

Last year, a video went viral of Warren Smith, then a high school teacher, speaking with an off-camera student. In it, Warren responds to his student’s claim that J.K. Rowling is a bigot by posing a series of calm, logic-driven questions. What’s striking about the clip is that it’s the opposite of typical social media fare: no outrage, no name-calling, just sincere, open-ended dialogue that gently leads the student to reconsider his position in real time. It was a rare moment of online civil debate, and it resonated with millions.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Warren’s employer was less enthusiastic about this conversation. He lost his teaching job as a result. Since then, he has continued to pursue difficult conversations, including with students, through his YouTube channel, the Secret Scholar Society.

I sat down with Warren to talk about what he’s learned from his years in education, both as a teacher who pushed past the increasingly narrow boundaries of acceptable speech in the classroom, and as a student who, during his master’s program at Emerson in the late 2010s, encountered some of the same dynamics I saw at Columbia University.

We talk about the stifling atmosphere of ideological rigidity, the soft bigotry of low expectations, and the reality of campus life—situations that sound truly unbelievable unless you’ve seen them firsthand. Together, we discuss why so many institutions continue to struggle with balancing open inquiry against mounting social pressures, and what it will take to build a better future for American students.

00:00:00 - Intro
00:01:25 - Ad
00:01:57 — The Viral J.K. Rowling Conversation
00:03:30 — From Special-Ed Classroom to YouTube
00:05:58 — Piers Morgan, Backlash & Getting Fired
00:11:50 — Emerson, Columbia & the 2016 Shock
00:18:00 — Oppression Olympics & Campus Activism
00:30:30 — Affirmative Action, Alienation & Status
00:37:26 - Trump, Universities & Government Pressure
00:42:50 — Professors, Postmodernism & Modern Art
00:56:56 — Moral Relativism, Violence & Political Hypocrisy
01:00:36 — Refuting Postmodernism & Defending Truth
01:07:38 — Fixing Universities & The Path Forward