Skip to content
ADVERTISEMENT
Sign In
  • Sections
    • News
    • Advice
    • The Review
  • Topics
    • Data
    • Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
    • Finance & Operations
    • International
    • Leadership & Governance
    • Teaching & Learning
    • Scholarship & Research
    • Student Success
    • Technology
    • Transitions
    • The Workplace
  • Magazine
    • Current Issue
    • Special Issues
    • Podcast: College Matters from The Chronicle
  • Newsletters
  • Virtual Events
  • Ask Chron
  • Store
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
  • Jobs
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
    • Professional Development
    • Career Resources
    • Virtual Career Fair
  • More
  • Sections
    • News
    • Advice
    • The Review
  • Topics
    • Data
    • Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
    • Finance & Operations
    • International
    • Leadership & Governance
    • Teaching & Learning
    • Scholarship & Research
    • Student Success
    • Technology
    • Transitions
    • The Workplace
  • Magazine
    • Current Issue
    • Special Issues
    • Podcast: College Matters from The Chronicle
  • Newsletters
  • Virtual Events
  • Ask Chron
  • Store
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
  • Jobs
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
    • Professional Development
    • Career Resources
    • Virtual Career Fair
    Upcoming Events:
    Hands-On Career Preparation
    An AI-Driven Work Force
    Alternative Pathways
Sign In
Teaching

NYU’s Firing of a Chemistry Professor Caused a Furor. Here’s What He Has to Say About It.

By Tom Bartlett October 10, 2022
Maitland Jones, an NYU professor who was fired after 82 of his 350 students signed a petition against him, in New York, Sept. 28, 2022. Students said Jones's course was too hard and blamed him and his teaching methods for their poor showings.
Maitland Jones Jr.Janice Chung, The New York Times, Redux

Everyone has a take on the dismissal of Maitland Jones Jr. An op-ed writer for the New York Post believes it “should frighten every American.” A headline on NBC News’s website declares that it “shows how low colleges have sunk.” Over at CNN, a columnist worries about a “dangerous precedent.” Meanwhile, a Los Angeles Times contributor has a message for students: “You don’t ‘get’ a grade. You have to earn it.”

The New York Times first reported that Jones, a longtime professor of organic chemistry and the author of a well-regarded textbook on the subject, had been given the ax by New York University. NYU declined to renew Jones’s contract in August, informing him that he had failed to meet the university’s teaching standards. That decision followed a petition signed by a group of students in his introductory organic-chemistry course, who complained that their grades hadn’t reflected the effort they’d put in.

To continue reading for FREE, please sign in.

Sign In

Or subscribe now to read with unlimited access for as low as $10/month.

Don’t have an account? Sign up now.

A free account provides you access to a limited number of free articles each month, plus newsletters, job postings, salary data, and exclusive store discounts.

Sign Up

Everyone has a take on the dismissal of Maitland Jones Jr. An op-ed writer for the New York Post believes it “should frighten every American.” A headline on NBC News’s website declares that it “shows how low colleges have sunk.” Over at CNN, a columnist worries about a “dangerous precedent.” Meanwhile, a Los Angeles Times contributor has a message for students: “You don’t ‘get’ a grade. You have to earn it.”

The New York Times first reported that Jones, a longtime professor of organic chemistry and the author of a well-regarded textbook on the subject, had been given the ax by New York University. NYU declined to renew Jones’s contract in August, informing him that he had failed to meet the university’s teaching standards. That decision followed a petition signed by a group of students in his introductory organic-chemistry course, who complained that their grades hadn’t reflected the effort they’d put in.

The story touched on a host of hot-button issues in higher ed, including the challenges of teaching during the pandemic, the ease with which non-tenured faculty members can be fired, the importance of rigor in undergraduate curricula, and whether students wield too much power. NYU took flak from all sides — and fired back as well. In a written statement, a spokesman for the university said Jones had been “hired to teach, and wasn’t successful.” The statement cited poor student evaluations and a high number of withdrawals.

For his part, Jones maintains that the university acted abruptly and unwisely. He pushed back on NYU’s specific allegation that, according to the spokesman, Jones “ceased the final grading of his current students’ work and left everyone in the lurch.” In fact, Jones said, he turned in his grades in May and wasn’t sure he would have access to the grading system after his contract wasn’t renewed. Speaking of grades, Jones said that 60 percent of the final marks in his last course were A’s or B’s. He also said that he had failed 19 of the 350 students in the class (most of those F’s, according to Jones, were later changed to withdrawals).

I spoke recently to the professor about his lengthy academic career, the remarkable furor around his departure, and what he thinks about students today. (The interview has been edited for clarity and length.)

I know this isn’t how you expected your career to end, with your story being seen as a parable about declining academic standards. How do you feel about that?

The honest answer is that it’s painful. It’s certainly not how I would have scripted it.

You spent 43 years at Princeton before going to NYU, in 2007. I’m curious what drew you to teaching in the first place and what made you want to continue after you retired from Princeton.

It was this material that turned me on and led me to my research career. I learned from an overwhelmingly charismatic and quite difficult person, but a fabulously good teacher. I wanted, in turn, to show that love of material to the next generations. And I wasn’t very good at the beginning, but I got better. And as I got better, there were things I thought I could do particularly well, and that made me want to do it even more. And, you know, if you scratch a successful lecturer — I don’t think there’s any doubt that that’s a proper description, at least of my Princeton years — you find a frustrated performer. So there was some of that, too. It’s a great audience when you think about it: smart, capable, slightly hostile. If you could win them over, then you’ve really done something.

ADVERTISEMENT

In your email to students notifying them that your contract had been terminated, you wrote the following: “Now a piece of unsolicited advice: It is very difficult to be self-critical. It is hard to accept personal responsibility when we meet failure, as each of us will at some point, but it is an essential life skill you would be wise to develop.” Do you think the students who signed that petition were unable to take personal responsibility for their academic performance in your class?

It won’t be true of every single one of them, of course, but it’ll be true of some of them. And in a way, it’s understandable, right? They’re young people, and they’re not very experienced in the world. How old are they? They’re 18 and 19. I guess it’s also the case that I think that the university administration is behaving the same way. I think they made a mistake. I think what they should have done was to get the parties together. Instead, they just overreacted, and now they can’t own up to that.

According to an NYU spokesman, your course evaluations were “by far the worst not only among members of the chemistry department but among all the university’s undergraduate science courses,” and those evaluations accused you of “dismissiveness, unresponsiveness, condescension, and opacity about grading.” I’m curious how you’d respond to that.

When they said the grading system was opaque, it was anything but. It was written down in black and white on the course syllabus.

ADVERTISEMENT

The evaluation process has been sadly devalued. That once-very-useful process is now just another social-media opportunity to vent. And I think that’s a pity. Were I in the administration’s position, I would no longer lean on or pay much attention to, frankly, student evaluations. My evaluations at Princeton were 4.8 out of five, 4.9, stuff like that. Early on I found it very useful. Over time I think that usefulness has disappeared, and they’re often very nasty, sometimes profane, and they’re hard to look at. The good ones swell your head, and the bad ones make you angry. So there’s no more profit in it.

To be fair, I’ve read a bunch of accounts from former students of yours who say that you were among their favorite professors. What’s the reaction been like since the Times piece was published?

Most of it’s been enormously positive. And it has been a good thing to come out of this, that it’s connected me with a lot of folks that I’ve lost contact with.

Your dismissal has been viewed by some as evidence that the current generation of students is entitled and that craven university administrators are willing to sacrifice rigor in order to placate them. Is that how you see it?

I would like to not comment on that.

Why not?

If I say yes, that’s going to be interpreted as I think that all students are like that. And that’s absolutely not the case. As the bottom has fallen out of some of the class, the top is just fine. And indeed, they’re doing better than they used to do because the exams and so on have become easier, which is a shame. But I have to admit there’s been a certain amount of dumbing down, if you want to use the stock phrase, in my class, and the kids who used to get 90 — which is a very, very strong grade — are now getting 100. I worry that we’re not serving the top 10 or 20 percent very well. They shouldn’t be getting a hundred. They should be getting 92 and then looking at what those eight missing points were and learning from that. And they’re completely capable of doing that.

ADVERTISEMENT

There’s been a lot of talk recently about the idea of weed-out courses. I wonder what you think about that term.

I hate it because it implies intent. We have no intent to weed people out. Absolutely not. The other side of that is you really do want a success in the professions coming down the line for these people. You really do want competency. You want doctors who are really good, and you want engineers who can build a bridge that’s going to stand up. And you want scientists who can — cliché alert — push the frontier. At Princeton or NYU, every single student in that class was capable of success. Maybe not of a 92, but of success. I deeply dislike the notion that, you know, we teach these courses in order to weed people out. We don’t. We teach these courses in order to bring them in.

We welcome your thoughts and questions about this article. Please email the editors or submit a letter for publication.
Tags
Teaching & Learning Labor
Share
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Facebook
  • Email
About the Author
Tom Bartlett
Tom Bartlett is a senior writer who covers science and ideas. Follow him on Twitter @tebartl.
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT

More News

Collage of charts
Data
How Faculty Pay and Tenure Can Change Depending on Academic Discipline
Vector illustration of two researcher's hands putting dollar signs into a beaker leaking green liquid.
'Life Support'
As the Nation’s Research-Funding Model Ruptures, Private Money Becomes a Band-Aid
Photo-based illustration of scissors cutting through a flat black and white university building and a landscape bearing the image of a $100 bill.
Budget Troubles
‘Every Revenue Source Is at Risk’: Under Trump, Research Universities Are Cutting Back
Photo-based illustration of the Capitol building dome topping a jar of money.
Budget Bill
Republicans’ Plan to Tax Higher Ed and Slash Funding Advances in Congress

From The Review

Photo-based illustration of the sculpture, The Thinker, interlaced with anotehr image of a robot posed as The Thinker with bits of binary code and red strips weaved in.
The Review | Essay
What I Learned Serving on My University’s AI Committee
By Megan Fritts
Illustration of a Gold Seal sticker embossed with President Trump's face
The Review | Essay
What Trump’s Accreditation Moves Get Right
By Samuel Negus
Illustration of a torn cold seal sticker embossed with President Trump's face
The Review | Essay
The Weaponization of Accreditation
By Greg D. Pillar, Laurie Shanderson

Upcoming Events

Ascendium_06-10-25_Plain.png
Views on College and Alternative Pathways
Coursera_06-17-25_Plain.png
AI and Microcredentials
  • Explore Content
    • Latest News
    • Newsletters
    • Letters
    • Free Reports and Guides
    • Professional Development
    • Virtual Events
    • Chronicle Store
    • Chronicle Intelligence
    • Jobs in Higher Education
    • Post a Job
  • Know The Chronicle
    • About Us
    • Vision, Mission, Values
    • DEI at The Chronicle
    • Write for Us
    • Work at The Chronicle
    • Our Reporting Process
    • Advertise With Us
    • Brand Studio
    • Accessibility Statement
  • Account and Access
    • Manage Your Account
    • Manage Newsletters
    • Individual Subscriptions
    • Group and Institutional Access
    • Subscription & Account FAQ
  • Get Support
    • Contact Us
    • Reprints & Permissions
    • User Agreement
    • Terms and Conditions
    • Privacy Policy
    • California Privacy Policy
    • Do Not Sell My Personal Information
1255 23rd Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20037
© 2025 The Chronicle of Higher Education
The Chronicle of Higher Education is academe’s most trusted resource for independent journalism, career development, and forward-looking intelligence. Our readers lead, teach, learn, and innovate with insights from The Chronicle.
Follow Us
  • twitter
  • instagram
  • youtube
  • facebook
  • linkedin