Treating Students With Respect

I was gratified to learn that Maitland Jones had been terminated from his post at NYU, and sorry only that it was not accomplished long before by Princeton University. Jones’ badass theatrics that so entertained his acolytes were too often laced with inappropriate callousness. The first (and last) time I dared to pose a question in his course, he mocked me with an exaggerated rendition of my “girlish” naivete, and then enjoined the entire auditorium (nearly all of whom were young men) to jeer at me. I remember this as an emblematic episode in the context of an atmosphere that was not particularly welcoming to women studying science at Princeton in the 1970s, and it still hurts almost 50 years later. I feel vindicated by Jones’ dismissal and pity the many other students he was allowed to torment decade after decade. All students deserve to be treated with respect. Period.