All of the coverage of this issue has been from the point of view of Jones with no pushback against the story that lazy students were demanding that the course be easier.

I don't buy it.

I used to work for a large computer science department at a large university, and I have friends who were part of the department's undergraduate office. It's quite rare to hear official complaints from any significant number of students about a professor's teaching, much less a petition signed by a quarter of the class.

Here are some other interesting features of the rest of the story:

Spring 2022 had "experimental" changes to the class, including required video lectures (that were apparently released on Friday nights) that were primary to interactive sessions, and a significant increase in course workload.

Jones' teaching evaluations had been lower than other instructors teaching the same course for many years.

Jones wasn't "fired"; he was working on year-by-year contracts and his contract was not renewed. A technicality, perhaps, but talk of "firing a professor" is simply excessive.

"Eighty-two of Jones’ 350 students signed a petition against him last spring, saying Jones had made his class too difficult and was at fault for their failing grades. ... An NYU spokesperson said multiple students had complained about Jones’ “dismissiveness, unresponsiveness, condescension and opacity about grading.” ... His course evaluation was also “by far the worst, not only among members of the chemistry department but among all the university’s undergraduate science courses.”" (https://nypost.com/2022/10/04/nyu-professor-allegedly-fired-...)

"Jones’ student-submitted course evaluations “were by far the worst, not only among members of the chemistry department, but among all the university’s undergraduate science courses.” ... dozens of comments across social media warning students about taking Jones’ class dating back more than a decade ... In the past five years, Jones’ co-professors teaching the same course typically had [student evaluation] scores around or above 4.0 on a 5.0 scale, while Jones averaged around 3.3. In his final semester, his evaluation score dropped to 2.4.

"They were part of an experimental semester, one that was forced to combine the in-person with the online, and Jones was not considerate of the need for change. The document explains that more work is not equivalent to more learning, and provides an estimate of how much time an average student spends on the class per week. Students said they spent 11 to 19 hours per week on the course — a course that traditionally takes up 10 to 15 hours per week.

"“He was teaching and writing the book like he expected you to be just as receptive to organic chemistry as he was and to take it in just as easily without breaking it down,” Paschal said. “He was not receptive to questions, and I didn’t want to open myself up for him to be rude to me.”

"In an email Jones sent to his students after he was fired, he apologized to those who did well in the course. “I send … an apology to those of you who cruised through this course with a relentless stream of 100s,” he wrote in the email. “I didn’t stretch you, and thus deprived you of the chance to improve beyond an already formidable baseline.”*" (https://nyunews.com/opinion/2022/10/05/maitland-jones-nytime...)