It is an opinion piece by the Ed Board of NYU’s student paper that raises specific issues with the NYT article. That’s highly relevant (and timely).
That’s all I am saying: there is another perspective out there, and it should be considered as part of this discussion.
I really don’t know what happened, and I suppose all of us here on this thread don’t either. We’re all entitled to an opinion, as are the NYU students who wrote the editorial.
Just responding to the bat signal here. 
Gonna try to stick to the topic as much as possible.
First, we never get the full context of these stories. Just skimming this thread, I see there was a cheating allegation that I hadn’t seen in the headlines and social media reactions. The more you dig the more complicated it gets. So I think it helps to have a touch of humility and not make claims that might turn out to be wrong or ill-informed later on.
Second, there’s a strong tendency to see the next generation in a negative light and forget about the ways our generation (though this site has several generations represented) behaved. That tendency is probably amplified by the fact that a little local story can go viral so quickly. We need to be careful about how we talk about “kids these days” because we know they are watching.
(I’m not going to respond specifically to the concern about a moderator here. I’m always open to private messages if you have a concern.)
Third, it’s hard to not see a trend where colleges are more open to acting on student complaints. Maybe I’m blinded by social media and misleading headlines, but it does seem as if universities are allowing concerns other than seeking truth to guide their decisions. Whatever the motivation, it’s troubling if a professor is fired because students failed his notoriously difficult class.
From the NYT article:
Marc A. Walters, director of undergraduate studies in the chemistry department, summed up the situation in an email to Dr. Jones, before his firing.
He said the plan would “extend a gentle but firm hand to the students and those who pay the tuition bills,” an apparent reference to parents.
Notice that the concerns wasn’t just the students, but the students and their parents. In other words, my generation is a part of the problem if the general outline of this story is what it sounds like. I know that I’m very concerned about my children reaching their goals and I understand the temptation to stand up for my child. But the school has a duty to make sure students have actually learned the material before they are allowed to pass a class. Tuition bills should never be part of that conversation.
At any rate, I’m not sure this is a “Sign of the Times” as much as a specific story reported by the Times.
Very accurate. Perhaps the OP title should be revised to say “Sign of the New York Times”? 
And now there’s a piece by the Ed Board of NYU’s student paper that controverts some of the NYT reporting.
Maybe. The NYTimes reporter is a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist on the staff of the Times for 17 years. The Times has a policy of fact-checking their stories.
No doubt it’s a great paper. But it’s far from infallible:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_controversies_involving_The_New_York_Times
For a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist to extrapolate this from her factual reporting to apply to an entire generation and over several schools/higher education generally seems to me to be over the top:
In short, this one unhappy chemistry class could be a case study of the pressures on higher education as it tries to handle its Gen-Z student body. Should universities ease pressure on students, many of whom are still coping with the pandemic’s effects on their mental health and schooling? How should universities respond to the increasing number of complaints by students against professors? Do students have too much power over contract faculty members, who do not have the protections of tenure?
My simple point is that there is another perspective on this that also needs to be considered. Nothing more.
Agreed. Though many of the 6k comments posted in response were from professors at other schools who shared the same view and issues noted as the journalist.
Fair enough.
As a parent of one of these students next year, it’s important to know these undercurrents. I will take a look at the comments when I have a chance, as I am very curious what other profs at other schools are saying.
Having come from a medical family (and having a sibling who was a top-notch science student), I would want any doctor treating our family to have been rigorously challenged in college and med school.
I guess I feel really sad for Dr. Jones after what appears to be an incredibly distinguished career. He was apparently on a year-to-year contract, and it sounds like NYU terminated that contract. Perhaps this whole mess could have been avoided if NYU just let the contract naturally expire and not renew it. That would have been the non-controversial way to end any issues.
Again, I don’t really know what happened, but this all seems far too much from what I can see thus far. NYU certainly could have handled this better.
He remains a professor emeritus at Princeton.
Was NOT!
The WSN article cited this 2020 document to show that the grievances were not limited to the 2022 semester:
“Students of Jones’ fall 2020 class wrote an 11-page document outlining their grievances with his handling of the course”
(And, reading that 2020 PDF, it’s not at all clear to me that those notes were actually referencing any particular professor, or class.)
I don’t think anyone has questioned this, and looking at the students’ Issue Outline from Fall 2020, it doesn’t even seem like failing grades were the primary issue. The students seem to have wanted to learn Organic Chemistry, but were questioning this professor’s ability to adequately teach them, especially during Covid.
While it was probably great for clicks, it is a shame the NYTimes decided to frame it as grade-grubbing narrative.
This is a story about a disguished professor being fired due to complaints from some of his students in a class and a subject that he has taught successfully for decades. Have we seen anything that he did that was so egregious that he deserved to be fired? If there’s more revelation about the professor and how he handled his class, we would have seen it by now.
On the other hand, if there’s any new revelation, it’s likely about those students. Even in the absence of any new revelation, are these students, who only managed to earn single digit or even zero in a class where 30% of their classmates got As, qualified and competent enough to be our future physicians and medical researchers? I wouldn’t want to take the chance, would you?
You mean besides having the lowest reviews not only in the 37-member chemistry department, but the lowest reviews in the entirety of the 147 science instructors at NYU? No, other than that, there is no evidence at all that this 84-year-old professor may have passed his prime. But carry on. I know we have a narrative about entitled kids to push, here.
He was contingent faculty so there was a low bar to justify getting rid of him.
While we don’t know everything about why his contract wasn’t renewed, we know that the university determined that his performance “did not rise to the standards we require from our teaching faculty.”
We also know, among other things, that his evaluations were by far the worst of any science professor, that there were numerous complaints about his “dismissiveness, unresponsiveness, condescension and opacity about grading;” that he couldn’t figure out how to teach a zoom class; that his students were so lost they couldn’t even understand the questions; that the students alleged he wasn’t providing his recorded lectures in a timely fashion, that the Recitation Lecturers often contradicted the professor, were unorganized, refused to record their sessions, and often refused to take questions; that the students had no idea how the grading worked or where they stood; that he was dismissive and unresponsive to student concerns, etc.
Given that he was contingent faculty, they had more than enough justification to get rid of him.
[Edited to remove references to the terms of his contract. I don’t know what it said, and I shouldn’t presume.]
New revelations can be found on academic twitter:
Plenty of professors got poor reviews, especially from students who got low grades in class. Do you know any of them who were fired as a result?
Another interesting perspective (unfortunately subscriber only access):
You’re only listening to one side of story. If the professor is so incompetent, how did he manage to have successfully taught the class before and why only a small portion of his class failed his class? Who were really incompetent? The professor or those students?
Alas, tenure prevents firing. Luckily, this professor was contracted. Shame, that.
And for all we know, orgo receives the worst reviews every year of any course, regardless of instructor, as it is a weeder course for pre-meds.
The Times follow on story notes that adjuncts’ contracts are routinely not renewed, and the whole issue comes down to expensive colleges keeping paying customers happy. That system works if your adjunct needs the job, but not if the adjunct is world-renowned already and teaching from a love of the material.
I was told that I wasn’t good at organic chemistry (earned a B- in Orgo 1 in college) and that I shouldn’t be a doctor because being bad at orgo means that you’re sucky at biology.
Not by this NYU professor, but on CC.