I'm sad to see this guy fired. He tried very hard to make it clear that he believes diversity is valuable, that discrimination is real and needs to be addressed, and that he was discussing distribution at the population level rather than individuals. And he cited several references in support of his ideas - giving dissenters ample opportunity to attack his arguments on the basis of their merits. The memo had some rough edges and questionable assertions to be sure - but to me at least he came across as a reasonable person that you could have an intelligent discussion with.

But rather than discussing the ideas in the memo, people who have never met him and who presumably don't know the context with which the memo was released have twisted his arguments, made assumptions that he racist and sexist beyond hope of recovery, and needed to be fired.

I understand that his memo was extremely inflammatory and therefore probably not appropriate for the workplace (although, again, I don't know the exact context in which it was distributed initially). But now that it's gone viral - wouldn't it be better to have the discussion rather than trying to silence him and pretend it never happened? Because I am sure there are more people out there with the same views. People who are in charge of hiring decisions, are terrified to discuss their views in public, and are now that much less likely to ever change.

Personally, it's not immediately obvious to me when reading the memo or the cited references that he was wrong. There are a lot of crackpots out there who cling to indefensible ideas and refuse to change their minds in the face of overwhelming evidence - but this guy didn't feel like one of them to me. To me this felt purely like identity politics winning out over intelligent debate and the pursuit of truth.