NYU’s firing of Professor Maitland Jones Jr. should frighten every American
Since the firing, I have been reading opinions here. I have collected a set of thoughts:<p>There are two seeming possibilities :<p>(1) The more probable one, where students are resorting to cancel culture when they feel the outcomes are not to their desires. This is a harmful trend. The road only leads to diluted standards. Professional education isn&#x27;t feel-happy. It sets you up to face real challenges. I can&#x27;t expect my doctor to post a TikTok video canceling me if I complained the treatment wasn&#x27;t working well.<p>Edit: Professional education not being feel-happy is not about the stress but rigors compared to non-STEM streams.<p>Edit 2: (Personal anecdote) My undergrad computer vision was taught by a Chinese American professor, who did a rather fine job at setting test &amp; gradings. No one failed his course though the grades were distributed A through C. He was similarly &quot;voted out&quot; from teaching that course by the feedback system simply because the assigned readings were long, &amp; had expository papers which some kids did not want to put efforts into. A few including me, benefitted greatly by the course though - and feel sorry this happened anyway.<p>(2) There is a smaller chance the course is unimaginably hard compared to similar courses elsewhere. I don&#x27;t know that very well. But I would give some benefit of doubt to the professor still, to know how to teach the fundamentals well. If the course is not geared towards med school entrances only, its not on the professor to keep the rigors. For example, a CS course for CS grad students should be expected to have considerable programming. It should not be crosslisted with Arts &amp; Languages, who need computing credits. A different course better serves the purpose. Maybe the med school requisite course should have been different from the standard Organic Chemistry I.<p>Treating degree as a commodity will lead to grade inflation &amp; lot of people finding their degrees of less value. They will have the qualifications but not the deep skills &amp; insights to solve the practical problems. And that makes the vicious cycle complete where we are skeptical of the costly education. College is necessary - but not grad school. Not always. And those who chose the second, should be prepared to endure some rigors of the learning path.