I don’t need to see the contract to know that the language of the NYU termination letter and the PR spokesman’s statements were highly ill-advised and legally problematic, regardless of the contract terms.
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I apologize if I overstated your positions. I note though in your post 303, you stated “Jones was not eligible to file a grievance when he was not reappointed” without any qualification. I was merely pointing out that this is not settled.
Prof Jones certainly has access to his contract, and he certainly believed he was entitled to a grievance procedure. Like I said, it will likely take a third party to make this determination.
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Well, that renders a large proportion of this thread’s discussion moot, doesn’t it? 
The originally posted article asks, “Who was to blame”, and proposes that “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.” A follow-up post providing a NYT op-ed, which states that “… elite universities don’t do much to acknowledge those [contemporary] realities and instead rely on outdated models that presume the only relevant differences among students are how smart they are and how hard they work.”
How are med school admissions standards and undergraduate training methods to meet them not fundamentally part of this current controversy, as represented in the media and on this forum?
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I’m not a physician so I assume that you’re right that organic chemistry may not be relevant to most physicians. What about medical researchers? Would organic chemistry be more relevant to them? I don’t know if I’m right but I’d also assume that the skills demonstrated in learning organic chemistry may be a good indicator of how well a premed student will learn other necessary skills in medical school and beyond, in the same way that how well an engineering student does in physics is a good indicator, even though some of physics s/he learned may not be relevant.
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Maybe organic chemistry shouldn’t be required for any med school at all. Very possible. He doesn’t determine that, and neither does NYU. NYU offers this course for those interested in the subject. The syllabus and prior exams were both available and consistent with the course content of this subject. The point of controversy appears to be the grading, and we do not know whether the 70% A and B grades in this course was similar to other STEM grade distributions at NYU or other colleges.
It was never Jones’ job to fix med school in America. Just to teach a course.
One might reasonably wonder why such a core course with 350 students was assigned to a contract professor at NYU to begin with.
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I appreciate the apology. As for the statement you quote from earlier in the thread, I have qualified it repeatedly and in multiple posts, including in the very post where you misquoted me and in the post to which you just responded. If you’d like, I can repeat the qualifications yet again, but it seems it pretty was well addressed.
One would think he would have access to it. But if the contract terms helped his case, then perhaps he should have submitted it along with all the other information (including his curriculum vitae) he submitted as part of his grievance. The Wash Square article lists the items he submitted and the contract isn’t included.
Care to elaborate why? Because I’m not sure that repeating the same unsupported legal conclusion over and over without further explanation advances the conversation. Thanks in advance for further explaining it to us.
I am a medical researcher, and I would say that knowledge of organic chemistry is integral to my work.
Does that mean that current delivery of organic chemistry coursework is ideal for developing that knowledge? I would say absolutely not. I would say that my own decades-old coursework was perfectly in sync with the times, but was inadequate compared to what can be delivered today. E.g., bring on the flipped classroom, the active pedagogy! (Maybe. Heed the caveat that I am no educator).
The gatekeeping simply does not serve knowledge building, only the status quo and its inequities.
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That’s what I thought and probably why organic chemistry is part of the curriculum for premed students.
Most people on this forum have been employed. Most are well aware that employers almost uniformly have a policy of never commenting publicly on the reasons for an employee 's termination, regardless of cause. That is to protect the employer from subsequent legal claims, and to protect the confidentiality of the HR process.
NYU, through its spokesman, commented publicly. NYU will regret that.
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Absolutely agree. But the controversy, here and elsewhere, is about whose standards should define whether that job was done poorly or well. I don’t think the issue is about whether Jones simply taught the class.
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Well, it is for Jones
That’s certainly an interesting place to cut off my post, which continued on to say that the importance of organic chemistry in some careers doesn’t speak to the question of whether it is being currently it’s being taught well, with knowledge deliverd in a way that can be measured by currently meaningful metrics.
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Well, maybe this discussion should be taking place on MaitlandJonesConfidential.com then.
For comparison purposes, the link provides average grades for Orgo by professors at Clemson. Looks like Jones was generous.
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To very few. I have been involved in a number of research projects, and none have used what I learned in O-chem, beyond just the basic info (e.g. the basics of proteins, the basics of carbohydrates, the basics of steroids, naming conventions.) Never have I needed to use what Dr. Maitland Jones is purported to be known for-- teaching how to put organic building blocks together into large 3-D organic molecules*. Certainly there are some doctors who do medical research deep in the weeds of large bio-organic molecules, but these researchers invariably have MD/PhD dual degrees.
.*I have read some comments that Dr. Jones’ textbook revolutionized the content of O-Chem classes by eliminating “memorization” and changing the courses to focus on problem solving. This brings 2 thoughts to my mind:
- I took O-Chem some years before Dr. Jones published the first edition of his textbook. My courses had essentially no memorization, and focused almost completely on problem solving, and the text we used had the same focus. So how can he be credited with this invention?
- I wonder if some schools still focus more on “memorization” and less on molecule puzzles. I think for teaching students who will be pursuing a PhD in chemistry (this was the focus of my school) the later style is needed. But for students going into the health sciences, the former approach might have been better. I’m not sure, as my school was focused on creating future PhDs, not future MDs, and I have no personal experience with “memorization”-based O-Chem classes.
Thanks for the explanation. I made a related point above regarding the contract terms. While it is not entirely clear to me that the NYU statement is problematic given the information Jones has released, I nonetheless appreciate the clarification.
I am more focus on the letter of termination, and your claim that you don’t need to see the contract to know that termination later was “legally problematic.” Care to explain?
What was the percentage of withdrawals from Jones’s classes, and how does it compare?
Note that inforapound is not an MD, but rather a PhD. (correct me if I’m wrong @inforapound)
Personal service contract termination letters do not provide a reason for termination in the overwhelming majority of cases. There is no need to do so. This one did. NYU will regret that, too.
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You are correct.
Your concerns don’t seem to have much to do with whether NYU had justification to decline to renew his contract, so I’ll refrain from getting into it further.