Teacher Suspended for Showing Fox News Documentary

A high school teacher has been suspended after showing students a Fox News documentary about due process rights.

Mike Poplardo is an economics teacher at Fox Lane High School in Bedford. In May of 2018, he spent two days on a “mini-unit” designed to prepare students for college. During this lesson, he showed students the Fox News documentary titled “Fox News Reporting: The Truth about Sex and College.”

The documentary (which includes commentary from this reporter), hosted by Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum, tells the stories of several male students who say they were falsely accused of sexual assault, in one instance also talking to the female accuser for her perspective. It also debunks some common myths surrounding sexual assault statistics.

Poplardo did not show the documentary to warn male students that they will be falsely accused by women. Instead, he used the film as a jumping off point to a larger discussion about sexual assault.

“Our Essential Question: What strategies can you put in place to avoid being in the ‘mess’ depicted in the video as a victim of sexual violence or a person accused of sexual violence?” Poplardo asks in his lesson plan — which he provided to The Daily Wire — after a link to the video.

The teacher believed that he and his students had a very productive conversation but since he is the only conservative at the school, he was targeted.