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AD's avatar

Regarding the Maitland Jones controversy at NYU… I took two semesters of Orgo with Jones at Princeton in the ‘04-‘05 school year because I was a molecular biology major (though not pre-med). Orgo with Jones was one of the most incredible academic experiences I had in college. I probably worked harder in Orgo than in every other class put together sophomore year, but it was so incredibly rewarding (full disclosure, I fortunately got A’s both semesters). I agree that there is an important philosophical question as to whether weed-out college pre-med classes are the best way to select for medical talent. But I actually don’t think Jones was ever intending to create a pre-med weed-out class. In fact, I don’t think he gave a hoot whether his students were pre-med or not (though the majority were). He probably wanted all of them to go on to do Chemistry Ph.Ds, and was designing a class that would lead people to see beauty in chemistry as he does. His class was unique in that there were no lectures… we spent the classes solving problems in groups of four, so the style really rewarded self-starters. My experience with Jones was that he really did not suffer fools and could be a bit of a diva, but if you were self-starter and came to every class ready to participate and having done the assigned background reading in advance, he would respect you and really engage with you on the problem sets that we worked on during class. I wonder if that “suffers no fools / could be a bit of a diva” style just doesn’t work so well with the current generation of college students, in which case I feel bad for them if it means they don’t have the opportunity to learn from someone like Jones who has so much to offer.

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Andrew Valentine's avatar

I'm not sure that the Senakw is very scalable. I suppose the federal governments of the US and Canada could give out large loans (though I expect that would be unpopular very quickly), but the reason the Squamish Nation was able to consider this project at all is because they are extremely rich. The Tulalip Tribes might be able to do something similar in Seattle (but they might not have a strong claim to the land if the Dwamish become recognized), but I think that's about as far as it goes for tribes that are in a position to do this if they were to be given city center land to do with as they wished

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